The Cabinet of Curiosities

ONE

PENDERGAST CLOSED HIS eyes against the darkness. Gradually, the chessboard appeared, materializing out of a vague haze. The ivory and ebony chess pieces, smoothed by countless years of handling, stood quietly, waiting for the game to begin. The chill of the damp stone, the rough grasp of the manacles, the pain in his ribs, Nora’s frightened voice, the occasional distant cry, all fell away one by one, leaving only an enfolding darkness, the board standing quietly in a pool of yellow light. And still Pendergast waited, breathing deeply, his heartbeat slowing. Finally, he reached forward, touched a cool chess piece, and advanced his king’s pawn forward two spaces. Black countered. The game began, slowly at first, then faster, and faster, until the pieces flew across the board. Stalemate. Another game, and still another, with the same results. And then, rather abruptly, came darkness — utter darkness.

When at last he was ready, Pendergast once again opened his eyes.

He was standing in the wide upstairs hallway of the Maison de la Rochenoire, the great old New Orleans house on Dauphine Street in which he had grown up. Originally a monastery erected by an obscure Carmelite order, the rambling pile had been purchased by Pendergast’s distant grandfather many times removed in the eighteenth century, and renovated into an eccentric labyrinth of vaulted rooms and shadowy corridors.

Although the Maison de la Rochenoire had been burned down by a mob shortly after Pendergast left for boarding school in England, he continued to return to it frequently. Within his mind, the structure had become more than a house. It had become a memory palace, a storehouse of knowledge and lore, the place for his most intense and difficult meditations. All of his own experiences and observations, all of the many Pendergast family secrets, were housed within. Only here, safe in the mansion’s Gothic bosom, could he meditate without fear of interruption.

And there was a great deal to meditate upon. For one of the few times in his life, he had known failure. If there was a solution to this problem, it would lie somewhere within these walls — somewhere within his own mind. Searching for the solution would mean a physical search of his memory palace.

He strolled pensively down the broad, tapestried corridor, the rose-colored walls broken at regular intervals by marble niches. Each niche contained an exquisite miniature leather-bound book. Some of these had actually existed in the old house. Others were pure memory constructs — chronicles of past events, facts, figures, chemical formulae, complex mathematical or metaphysical proofs — all stored by Pendergast in the house as a physical object of memory, for use at some unknown future date.

Now, he stood before the heavy oaken door of his own room. Normally he would unlock the door and linger within, surrounded by the familiar objects, the comforting iconography, of his childhood. But today he continued on, pausing only to pass his fingers lightly over the brass knob of the door. His business lay elsewhere, below, with things older and infinitely stranger.

He had mentioned to Nora his inability to maintain proper intellectual distance in the case, and this was undeniably true. This was what had led him, and her — and, to his deepest sorrow, Patrick O’Shaughnessy — into the present misfortune. What he had not revealed to Nora was the profound shock he felt when he saw the face of the dead man. It was, as he now knew, Enoch Leng — or, more accurately, his own great-grand-uncle, Antoine Leng Pendergast.

For Great-Grand-Uncle Antoine had succeeded in his youthful dream of extending his life.

The last remnants of the ancient Pendergast family — those who were compos mentis—assumed that Antoine had died many years ago, probably in New York, where he had vanished in the mid ninteenth century. A significant portion of the Pendergast family fortune had vanished with him, much to the chagrin of his collateral descendants.

But several years before, while working on the case of the Subway Massacre, Pendergast — thanks to Wren, his library acquaintance — had stumbled by chance upon some old newspaper articles. These articles described a sudden rash of disappearances: disappearances that followed not long after the date Antoine was supposed to have arrived in New York. A corpse had been discovered, floating in the East River, with the marks of a diabolical kind of surgery. It was a street waif, and the crime was never solved. But certain uncomfortable details caused Pendergast to believe it to be the work of Antoine, and to feel the man was attempting to achieve his youthful dream of immortality. A perusal of later newspapers brought a half-dozen similar crimes to light, stretching as far forward as 1935.

The question, Pendergast realized, became: had Leng succeeded? Or had he died in 1935?

Death seemed by far the most likely result. And yet, Pendergast had remained uneasy. Antoine Leng Pendergast was a man of transcendental genius, combined with transcendental madness.

So Pendergast waited and watched. As the last of his line, he’d felt it his responsibility to keep vigil against the unlikely chance that, someday, evidence of his ancestor’s continued existence would resurface. When he heard of the discovery on Catherine Street, he immediately suspected what had happened there, and who was responsible. And when the murder of Doreen Hollander was discovered, he knew that what he most dreaded had come to pass: Antoine Pendergast had succeeded in his quest.

But now, Antoine was dead.

There could be no doubt that the mummified corpse in the glass case was that of Antoine Pendergast, who had taken, in his journey northward, the name Enoch Leng. Pendergast had come to the house on Riverside Drive expecting to confront his own ancestor. Instead, he had found his great-grand-uncle tortured and murdered. Someone, somehow, had taken his place.

Who had killed the man who called himself Enoch Leng? Who now held them prisoner? The corpse of his ancestor was only recently dead—the state of the corpse suggested that death had occurred within the last two months — pegging the murder of Enoch Leng before the discovery of the charnel on Catherine Street.

The timing was very, very interesting.

And then there was that other problem — a very quiet, but persistent feeling that there was a connection still to be made here — that had been troubling Pendergast almost since he first set foot within Leng’s house.

Now, inside the memory crossing, he continued down the hall. The next door — the door that had once been his brother’s — had been sealed by Pendergast himself, never to be opened again. He quickly moved on.

The hallway ended in a grand, sweeping staircase leading down to a great hall. A heavy cut-glass chandelier hovered over the marble floor, mounting on a gilt chain to a domed trompe l’oeil ceiling. Pendergast descended the stairs, deep in thought. To one side, a set of tall doors opened into a two-story library; to the other, a long hall retreated back into shadow. Pendergast entered this hall first. Originally, this room had been the monastery’s refectory. In his mind, he had furnished it with a variety of family heirlooms: heavy rosewood chiffoniers, oversized landscapes by Bierstadt and Cole. There were other, more unusual heirlooms here, as well: sets of Tarot cards, crystal balls, a spirit-medium apparatus, chains and cuffs, stage props for illusionists and magicians. Other objects lay in the corners, shrouded, their outlines sunken too deeply into shadow to discern.

As he looked around, his mind once again felt the ripples of a disturbance, of a connection not yet made. It was here, it was all around him; it only awaited his recognition. And yet it hovered tantalizingly out of grasp.

This room could tell him no more. Exiting, he re-crossed the echoing hall and entered the library. He looked around a moment, savoring the books, real and imaginary, row upon comforting row, that rose to the molded ceiling far above. Then he stepped toward one of the shelves on the nearest wall. He glanced along the rows, found the book he wanted, pulled it from the shelf. With a low, almost noiseless click, the shelf swung away from the wall.

… And then, abruptly, Pendergast found himself back in Leng’s house on Riverside Drive, standing in the grand foyer, surrounded by Leng’s astonishing collections.

He hesitated, momentarily stilled by surprise. Such a shift, such a morphing of location, had never happened in a memory crossing before.

But as he waited, looking around at the shrouded skeletons and shelves covered with treasures, the reason became clear. When he and Nora first passed through the rooms of Leng’s house — the grand foyer; the long, low-ceilinged exhibit hall; the two-storied library — Pendergast had found himself experiencing an unexpected, uncomfortable feeling of familiarity. Now he knew why: in his house on Riverside Drive, Leng had re-created, in his own dark and twisted way, the old Pendergast mansion on Dauphine Street.

He had finally made the crucial connection. Or had he?

Great-Uncle Antoine? Aunt Cornelia had said. He went north, to New York City. Became a Yankee. And so he had. But, like all members of the Pendergast family, he had been unable to escape his legacy. And here in New York, he had re-created his own Maison de la Rochenoire — an idealized mansion, where he could amass his collections and carry on his experiments, undisturbed by prying relations. It was not unlike, Pendergast realized, the way he himself had re-created the Maison de la Rochenoire in his own mind, as a memory palace.

This much, at least, was now clear. But his mind remained troubled. Something else was eluding him: a realization hovering at the very edge of awareness. Leng had a lifetime, several lifetimes, in which to complete his own cabinet of curiosities. Here it was, all around him, possibly the finest natural history collection ever assembled. And yet, as Pendergast looked around, he realized that the collection was incomplete. One section was missing. Not just any section, in fact, but the central collection: the one thing that had fascinated the young Antoine Leng Pendergast most. Pendergast felt a growing astonishment. Antoine — as Leng — had had a century and a half to complete this ultimate cabinet of curiosities. Why was it not here?

Pendergast knew it existed. It must exist. Here, in this house. It was just a question of where…

A sound from the outside world — a strangely muffled scream — suddenly intruded into Pendergast’s memory crossing. Quickly, he withdrew again, plunging as deeply as he could into the protective darkness and fog of his own mental construct, trying to recover the necessary purity of concentration.

Time passed. And then, in his mind, he found himself once again back in the old house on Dauphine Street, standing in the library.

He waited a moment, re-acclimating himself to the surroundings, giving his new suspicions and questions time to mature. In his mind’s eye he recorded them on parchment and bound them between gilt covers, placing the book on one of the shelves beside a long row of similar books — all books of questions. Then he turned his attention to the bookcase that had swung open. It revealed an elevator.

He stepped into the elevator at the same, thoughtful pace, and descended.

The cellar of the former monastery on Dauphine Street was damp, the walls thick with efflorescence. The mansion’s cellars consisted of vast stone passageways crusted with lime, verdigris, and the soot from tallow candles. Pendergast threaded his way through the maze, arriving at last at a cul-de-sac formed by a small, vaulted room. It was empty, devoid of ornament, save for a single carving that hung over a bricked-up arch in one of the walls. The carving was of a shield, containing a lidless eye over two moons: one crescent, the other full. Below was a lion, couchant. It was the Pendergast family crest: the same crest that Leng had perverted into his own escutcheon, carved onto the facade of the mansion on Riverside Drive.

Pendergast approached this wall, stood beneath the crest for a moment, gazing at it. Then, placing both hands upon the cold stone, he applied a sharp forward pressure. The wall instantly swung away, revealing a circular staircase, sloping down and away at a sharp angle into the subbasement.

Pendergast stood at the top of the stairs, feeling the steady stream of chill air that wafted like a ghostly exhalation from the depths below. He remembered the day, many years ago, when he had first been inducted into the family secrets: the hidden panel in the library, the stone chambers beneath, the room with the crest. And finally this, the greatest secret of all.

In the real house on Dauphine Street, the stairs had been dark, approachable only with a lantern. But in Pendergast’s mind, a faint greenish light now issued up from far below. He began to descend.

The stairs led downward in a spiral. At last, Pendergast emerged into a short tunnel that opened into a vaulted space. The floor was earthen. Long ranks of carefully mortised bricks rose to a groined ceiling. Rows of torches flamed on the walls, and chunks of frankincense smoked in copper braziers, overlaying a much stronger smell of old earth, wet stone, and the dead.

A brick pathway ran down the center of the room, flanked on both sides by stone tombs and crypts. Some were marble, others granite. A few were heavily decorated, carved into fantastic minarets and arabesques; others were squat, black, monolithic. Pendergast started down the path, glancing at the bronze doors set into the facades, the familiar names graven onto the face plates of tarnished brass.

What the old monks had used this subterranean vault for, Pendergast never learned. But almost two hundred years before, this place had become the Pendergast family necropolis. Here, over a dozen generations on both sides of the family — the fallen line of French aristocrats, the mysterious denizens of the deep bayou — had been buried or, more frequently, re-buried. Pendergast walked on, hands behind his back, staring at the carved names. Here was Henri Prendregast de Mousqueton, a seventeenth-century mountebank who pulled teeth, performed magic and comedy, and practiced quack medicine. And here, encased in a mausoleum bedecked with quartz minarets, was Eduard Pendregast, a well-known Harley Street doctor in eighteenth-century London. And here, Comstock Pendergast, famed mesmerist, magician, and mentor of Harry Houdini.

Pendergast strolled farther, passing artists and murderers, vaudeville performers and violin prodigies. At last he stopped beside a mausoleum grander than those around it: a ponderous conflation of white marble, carved into an exact replica of the Pendergast mansion itself. This was the tomb of Hezekiah Pendergast, his own great-great-grandfather.

Pendergast let his eye roam over the familiar turrets and finials, the gabled roof and mullioned windows. When Hezekiah Pendergast arrived on the scene, the Pendergast family fortune was almost gone. Hezekiah was released into the world penniless, but with big ambitions. Originally a snake-oil salesman allied with traveling medicine shows, he soon became known as a hippocratic sage, a man whose patent medicine could cure almost any disease. On the big bill, he appeared between Al-Ghazi, the contortionist, and Harry N. Parr, Canine Instructor. The medicine he peddled during these shows sold briskly, even at five dollars the bottle. Hezekiah soon established his own traveling medicine show, and with shrewd marketing, Hezekiah’s Compound Elixir and Glandular Restorative quickly became the first widely marketed patent medicine in America. Hezekiah Pendergast grew rich beyond the fondest visions of avarice.

Pendergast’s eyes swept downward, to the deep layers of shadow that surrounded the tomb. Ugly rumors began to surface about Hezekiah’s Compound Elixir within a year of its introduction: tales of madness, deformed births, wasting deaths. And yet sales grew. Doctors protested the elixir, calling it violently addictive and harmful to the brain. And still sales grew. Hezekiah Pendergast introduced a highly successful formula for babies, “Warranted to Make Your Child Peaceful.” In the end, a reporter for Collier’s magazine, together with a government chemist, finally exposed the elixir as an addictively lethal blend of chloroform, cocaine hydrochloride, acetanilid, and botanicals. Production was forced to cease — but not before Hezekiah’s own wife had succumbed to the addiction and died. Constance Leng Pendergast.

Antoine’s mother.

Pendergast turned away from the tomb. Then he stopped, glancing back. A smaller, simpler mausoleum of gray granite lay beside the greater one. The engraved plaque on its face read, simply, Constance.

He paused, recalling the words of his great-aunt: And then he began spending a lot of time down… down there. Do you know where I mean? Pendergast had heard the stories about how the necropolis became Antoine’s favorite place after his mother’s death. He’d spent his days here, year in and year out, in the shadow of her tomb, practicing the magic tricks his father and grandfather had taught him, performing experiments on small animals — and especially working with chemicals, developing nostrums and poisons. What else was it Aunt Cornelia had said? They say he always felt more comfortable with the dead than with the living.

Pendergast had heard rumors even Aunt Cornelia had been unwilling to hint at: rumors worse than the bad business with Marie LeClaire; rumors of certain hideous things found in the deep shadows of the tombs; rumors of the real reason behind Antoine’s permanent banishment from the house on Dauphine Street. But it wasn’t just the prolongation of life that had fixed Antoine’s attention. No, there had always been something else, something behind the prolongation of life, some project that he had kept the deepest of secrets…

Pendergast stared at the nameplate as a sudden revelation swept over him. These underground vaults had been Antoine’s workplace as a child. This is where he had played and studied, collected his appalling childhood trophies. This was where he had experimented with his chemicals; and it was here, in the cool, dark underground, where he had stored his vast collection of compounds, botanicals, chemicals, and poisons. Here, the temperature and humidity never changed: the conditions would be perfect.

More quickly now, Pendergast turned away, walking back down the pathway and passing beneath the tunnel, beginning the long climb back toward consciousness. For he knew, at last, where in the house on Riverside Drive the missing collection of Antoine Pendergast — of Enoch Leng — would be found.

TWO

NORA HEARD THE faint rattle of a chain, then a faint, whispered exhalation of breath from out of the nearby darkness. She licked dry lips, worked her mouth in an attempt to speak. “Pendergast?”

“I’m here,” came the weak voice.

“I thought you were dead!” Her body spasmed in an involuntary sob. “Are you all right?”

“I’m sorry I had to leave you. How much time has passed?”

“My God, are you deaf? That madman’s doing something terrible to Bill!”

“Dr. Kelly—”

Nora lunged against her chains. She felt wild with terror and grief, a frenzy that seemed to physically possess her body. “Get me out of here!”

“Dr. Kelly.” Pendergast’s voice was neutral. “Be calm. There is something we can do. But you must be calm.”

Nora stopped struggling and sank back, trying to control herself.

“Lean against the wall. Close your eyes. Take deep, regular breaths.” The voice was slow, hypnotic.

Nora closed her eyes, trying to push away the crowding terror, trying to regulate her breathing.

There was a long silence. And then Pendergast spoke again. “All right?”

“I don’t know.”

“Keep breathing. Slowly. Now?”

“Better. What happened to you? You really frightened me, I was sure—”

“There’s no time to explain. You must trust me. And now, I’m going to remove these chains.”

Nora felt a twinge of disbelief. There was a clanking and rattling, followed by a sudden silence.

She strained against her chains, listening intently. What was he doing? Had he lost his senses?

And then, abruptly, she felt someone take hold of her elbow, and simultaneously a hand slipped over her mouth. “I’m free,” Pendergast’s voice whispered in her ear. “Soon you will be, too.”

Nora felt stuporous with disbelief. She began to tremble.

“Relax your limbs. Relax them completely.”

It was as if he brushed her arms and legs ever so lightly. She felt the cuffs and chains simply fall away. It seemed magical.

“How did—?”

“Later. What kind of shoes are you wearing?”

“Why?”

“Just answer the question.”

“Let me think. Bally. Black. Flat heels.”

“I’m going to borrow one.”

She felt Pendergast’s narrow hands remove the shoe. There was a faint noise, a kind of metallic scraping sound, and then the shoe was slipped back onto her foot. Then she heard a low tapping, as if the iron cuffs were being struck together.

“What are you doing?”

“Be very quiet.”

Despite her best efforts, she felt the terror begin to rise again, overwhelming her mind. There hadn’t been any sounds from outside for several minutes. She stifled another sob. “Bill—”

Pendergast’s cool, dry hand slipped over hers. “Whatever has happened, has happened. Now, I want you to listen to me very carefully. Respond yes by squeezing my hand. Do not speak further.”

Nora squeezed his hand.

“I need you to be strong. I must tell you that I believe Smithback is now dead. But there are two other lives here, yours and mine, that need to be saved. And we must stop this man, whoever he is, or many more will die. Do you understand?”

Nora squeezed. Hearing her worst fears stated so baldly seemed almost to help, a little.

“I’ve made a small tool out of a piece of metal from the sole of your shoe. We will escape from this cell in a moment — the lock is no doubt quite primitive. But you must be ready to do exactly as I tell you.”

She squeezed.

“You need to know something first. I understand now, at least in part, what Enoch Leng was doing. He wasn’t prolonging his life as an end in itself. He was prolonging his life as a means to an end. He was working on a project that was even bigger than extended life — a project he realized would take several lifetimes to complete. That is why he went to the trouble of prolonging his life: so that he could accomplish this other thing.”

“What could be bigger than extended life?” Nora managed to say.

“Hush. I don’t know. But it is making me very, very afraid.”

There was a silence. Nora could hear Pendergast’s quiet breathing. Then he spoke again. “Whatever that project is, it is here, hidden in this house.”

There was another, briefer silence.

“Listen very carefully. I am going to open the door of this cell. I will then go to Leng’s operating room and confront the man who has taken his place. You will remain hidden here for ten minutes — no more, and no less — and then you will go to the operating room yourself. As I say, I believe Smithback to be dead, but we need to make sure. By that time the impostor and I will be gone. Do not pursue us. No matter what you hear, do not try to help. Do not come to my aid. My confrontation with this man will be decisive. One of us will not survive it. The other one will return. Let us hope that person is me. Do you understand so far?”

Another squeeze.

“If Smithback is still alive, do what you can. If he’s beyond help, you are to get out of the basement and the house as quickly as possible. Find your way upstairs and escape from a second-story window — I think you will find all the exits on the first floor to be impenetrable.”

Nora waited, listening.

“There is a chance that my plan will fail, and that you will find me dead on the floor of the operating room. In that case, all I can say is you must run for your life, fight for your life — and, if necessary, take your life. The alternative is too terrible. Can you do that?”

Nora choked back a sob. Then she squeezed his hand once again.

THREE

THE MAN EXAMINED the incision that ran along the resource’s lower spine from L2 to the sacrum. It was a very fine piece of work, the kind he had been so well appreciated for in medical school — back before the unpleasantness began.

The newspapers had nicknamed him the Surgeon. He liked the name. And as he gazed down, he found it particularly appropriate. He’d defined the anatomy perfectly. First, a long vertical incision from the reference point along the spinal process, a single steady stroke through the skin. Next, he had extended the incision down into the subcutaneous tissue, carrying it as far as the fascia, clamping, dividing, and ligating the larger vessels with 3–0 vicryl. He’d opened the fascia, then used a periosteal elevator to strip the muscle from the spinous processes and laminae. He’d been enjoying the work so much that he had taken more time at it than intended. The paralyzing effects of the succinyl choline had faded, and there had been rather a lot of struggling and noise at this point, yet his tie work remained as fastidious as a seamstress’s. As he cleared the soft tissue with a curette, the spinal column gradually revealed itself, grayish white against the bright red of the surrounding flesh.

The Surgeon plucked another self-retaining retractor from the instrument bin, then stood back to examine the incision. He was pleased: it was a textbook job, tight at the corners and spreading out slightly toward the middle. He could see everything: the nerves, the vessels, all the marvelous inner architecture. Beyond the lamina and ligamentum flavum, he could make out the transparent dura of the spinal cord. Within, bluish spinal fluid pulsed in time to the respiration of the resource. His pulse quickened as he watched the fluid bathe the cauda equina. It was undoubtedly his finest incision to date.

Surgery, he reflected, was more an art form than a science, requiring patience, creativity, intuition, and a steady hand. There was very little ratiocination involved; very little intellect came into play. It was an activity at once physical and creative, like painting or sculpture. He would have been a good artist — had he chosen that route. But of course, there would be time; there would be time…

He thought back once again to medical school. Now that the anatomy had been defined, the next step would normally be to define the pathology, then correct that pathology. But, of course, this was the point at which his work departed from the course of a normal operation and became something closer to an autopsy.

He looked back toward the nearby stand, making sure that everything he needed for the excision — the chisels, diamond burr drill, bone wax — was ready. Then he looked at the surrounding monitors. Although, most regrettably, the resource had slipped into unconsciousness, the vitals were still strong. New strides could not be taken, but the extraction and preparation should be successful nonetheless.

Turning toward the Versed drip inserted into the saline bag hung from the gurney, he turned the plastic stopcock to stop the flow: tranquilization, like the intubation, was no longer necessary. The trick now would be to keep the resource alive as far into the surgery as possible. There was still much to do, starting with the bony dissection: the removal of the lamina with a Kerrison rongeur. The goal at this point was to have the vitals still detectable when the operation was complete, with the cauda equina removed and lying intact in the special chilled cradle he had designed to receive it. He had reached that goal only twice before — with the slender young woman and the policeman — but this time he felt a swell of confidence in himself and his skills. He knew that he would achieve it again.

So far, everything had gone according to plan. The great detective, Pendergast, whom he had so feared, had proven less than formidable. Using one of the many traps in this strange old house against the agent had proven ridiculously easy. The others were minor irritants only. He had removed them all, swept them aside with so little effort it was almost risible. In fact it wasrisible, how pathetic they all were. The colossal stupidity of the police, the moronic Museum officials: how delightful it had all been, how very diverting. There was a certain justice in the situation, a justice that only he could appreciate.

And now he had almost achieved his goal. Almost. After these three had been processed, he felt sure he would be there. And how ironic it was that it would be these three, of all people, who helped him reach it…

He smiled slightly as he bent down to set another self-retaining retractor into place. And that was when he saw a small movement at the extreme edge of his peripheral vision.

He turned. It was the FBI agent, Pendergast, casually leaning against a wall just inside the archway leading into the operating room.

The man straightened, controlling the highly unpleasant surprise that rose within him. But Pendergast’s hands were empty; he was, of course, unarmed. With one swift, economical movement, the Surgeon took up Pendergast’s own gun — the two-tone Colt 1911, lying on the instrument table — pushed down on the safety with his thumb, and pointed the weapon at the agent.

Pendergast continued to lean against the wall. For the briefest of moments, as the two exchanged glances, something like astonishment registered in the pale cat’s eyes. Then Pendergast spoke.

“So it’s you who tortured and killed Enoch Leng. I wondered who the impostor was. I am surprised. I do not like surprises, but there it is.”

The man aimed the gun carefully.

“You’re already holding my weapon,” said Pendergast, showing his hands. “I’m unarmed.” He continued leaning casually against the wall.

The man tightened his finger on the trigger. He felt a second unpleasant sensation: internal conflict. Pendergast was a very dangerous man. It would no doubt be best to pull the trigger now and have done with it. But by shooting now, he would ruin a specimen. Besides, he needed to know how Pendergast had escaped. And then, there was the girl to consider…

“But it begins to make sense,” Pendergast resumed. “Yes, I see it now. You’re building that skyscraper on Catherine Street. You didn’t just discover those bodies by accident. No — you were looking for those bodies, weren’t you? You already knew that Leng had buried them there, 130 years ago. And how did you learn about them? Ah, it all falls into place: your interest in the Museum, your visits to the Archives. You were the one who examined the Shottum material before Dr. Kelly. No wonder it was all in such disarray — you’d already removed anything you felt useful. But you didn’t know about Tinbury McFadden, or the elephant’s-foot box. Instead, you first learned about Leng and his work, about his lab notebooks and journals, from Shottum’s personal papers. But when you ultimately tracked down Leng, and found him alive, he wasn’t as talkative as you would have liked. He didn’t give you the formula. Even under torture, did he? So you had to fall back on what Leng had left behind: his victims, his lab, perhaps his journals, buried beneath Shottum’s Cabinet. And the only way to get to those was to buy the land, tear down the brownstones above, and dig a foundation for a new building.” Pendergast nodded, almost to himself. “Dr. Kelly mentioned missing pages in the Archives logbook; pages removed with a razor. Those pages were the ones with your name on them, correct? And the only one who knew you had been a frequent visitor to the Archives was Puck. So he had to die. Along with those who were already on your own trail: Dr. Kelly, Sergeant O’Shaughnessy, myself. Because the closer we came to finding Leng, the closer we came to finding you.”

A pained expression came over the agent’s face. “How could I have been so obtuse not to see it? It should have become clear when I first saw Leng’s corpse. When I realized Leng had been tortured to death before the Catherine Street bodies were found.”

Fairhaven did not smile. The chain of deduction was astonishingly accurate. Just kill him, a voice in his head said.

“What is it the Arab sages call death?” Pendergast went on. “The destroyer of all earthly pleasures. And how true it is: old age, sickness, and at last death comes to us all. Some console themselves with religion, others through denial, others through philosophy or mere stoicism. But to you, who had always been able to buy everything, death must have seemed a dreadful injustice.”

The image of his older brother, Arthur, came unbidden to the Surgeon’s mind: dying of progeria, his young face withered with senile keratoses, his limbs twisted, his skin cracked with hideously premature age. The fact that the disease was so rare, its causes so unknown, had been no comfort. Pendergast didn’t know everything. Nor would he.

He forced the image from his mind. Just kill the man. But somehow his hand would not act — not yet, not until he had heard more.

Pendergast nodded toward the still form on the table. “You’re never going to get there that way, Mr. Fairhaven. Leng’s skills were infinitely more refined than yours. You will never succeed.”

Not true, Fairhaven thought to himself. I have already succeeded. I am Leng as he should have been. Only through me can Leng’s work attain its truest perfection…

“I know,” Pendergast said. “You’re thinking I’m wrong. You believe you have succeeded. But you have not succeeded, and you never will. Ask yourself: Do you feel any different? Do you feel any revivification of the limbs, any quickening of the life essence? If you’re honest with yourself, you can still feel the terrible weight of time pressing on you; that awful, relentless, bodily corruption that is happening constantly to us all.” He smiled thinly, wearily, as if he knew the feeling all too well. “You see, you’ve made one fatal mistake.”

The Surgeon said nothing.

“The truth is,” Pendergast said, “you don’t know the first thing about Leng, or his real work. Work for which life extension was just a means to an end.”

Years of self-discipline, of high-level corporate brinksmanship, had taught Fairhaven never to reveal anything: not in the facial expression, not in the questions asked. Yet the sudden stab of surprise he felt, followed immediately by disbelief, was hard to conceal. What real work? What was Pendergast talking about?

He would not ask. Silence was always the best mode of questioning. If you remained silent, they always talked out the answer in the end. It was human nature.

But this time it was Pendergast who remained silent. He simply stood there, leaning almost insolently against the doorframe, glancing around at the walls of the chamber. The silence stretched on, and the man began to think of his resource, lying there on the gurney. Gun on Pendergast, he glanced briefly at the vitals. Good, but starting to flag. If he didn’t get back to work soon, the specimen would be spoiled.

Kill him, the voice said again.

“What real work?” Fairhaven asked.

Still, Pendergast remained silent.

The merest spasm of doubt passed through Fairhaven, quickly suppressed. What was the man’s game? He was wasting his time, and there was no doubt a reason why he was wasting his time, which meant it was best just to kill him now. At least he knew the girl could not escape from the basement. He would deal with her in good time. Fairhaven’s finger tightened on the trigger.

At last, Pendergast spoke. “Leng didn’t tell you anything in the end, did he? You tortured him to no avail, because you’re still thrashing about, wasting all these people. But I do know about Leng. I know him very well indeed. Perhaps you noticed the resemblance?”

“What?” Again Fairhaven was taken off guard.

“Leng was my great-grand-uncle.”

It hit Fairhaven then. His grip on the weapon loosened. He remembered Leng’s delicate white face, his white hair, and his very pale blue eyes — eyes that regarded him without begging, without pleading, without beseeching, no matter how hideous it had become for him. Pendergast’s eyes were the same. But Leng had died anyway, and so would he.

So would he, the voice echoed, more insistently. His information is not as important as his death. This resource is not worth the risk. Kill him.

The man reapplied pressure to the trigger. At this distance, he could not miss.

“It’s hidden here in the house, you know. Leng’s ultimate project. But you’ve never found it. All along you’ve been looking for the wrong thing. And as a result, you will die a long, slow, wasting death of old age. Just like the rest of us. You cannot succeed.”

Squeeze the trigger, the voice in his head insisted.

But there was something in the agent’s tone. He knew something, something important. He wasn’t just talking. Fairhaven had dealt with bluffers before, and this man was not bluffing.

“Say what you have to say now,” said Fairhaven. “Or you will die instantly.”

“Come with me. I’ll show you.”

“Show me what?”

“I’ll show you what Leng was really working on. It’s in the house. Here, right under your nose.”

The voice in his head was no longer little; it was practically shouting. Do not allow him to continue talking, no matter how important his information may be. And Fairhaven finally heeded the wisdom of that advice.

Pendergast was leaning against the wall, off balance, his hands clearly in view. It would be impossible for the man, in the time it took to squeeze off one shot, to reach inside his suit and pull out a backup weapon. Besides, he had no such weapon; Fairhaven had searched him thoroughly. He took a fresh bead on Pendergast, then held his breath, increasing the pressure on the trigger. There was a sudden roar and the gun kicked in his hand. And he knew instantly: it had been a true shot.

FOUR

THE CELL DOOR stood open, allowing a faint light to filter in from the passageway beyond. Nora waited, shrinking back into the pool of darkness behind the cell door. Ten minutes. Pendergast had said ten minutes. In the dark, with her heart pounding like a sledgehammer, every minute seemed an hour, and it was almost impossible to tell the passage of time. She forced herself to count each second. A thousand one, a thousand two… Each count made her think of Smithback, and what might be happening to him. Or had happened to him.

Pendergast had told her he thought Smithback was dead. He had said this to spare her the shock of discovering it for herself. Bill is dead. Bill is dead. She tried to absorb it, but found her mind would not accept the fact. It felt unreal. Everything felt unreal. A thousand thirty. A thousand thirty-one. The seconds rolled on.

At six minutes and twenty-five seconds, the sound of a gunshot came, deafening in the confined spaces of the cellar.

Her whole body kicked in fear. It was all she could do not to scream. She crouched, waiting for the absurd skipping of her heart to slow. The terrible sound echoed and re-echoed, rumbling and rolling through the basement corridors. Finally, silence — dead silence — returned.

She felt her breath coming in gasps. Now it was doubly hard to count. Pendergast had said to wait ten minutes. Had another minute passed since the shot? She decided to resume the count again at seven minutes, hoping the monotonous, repetitive activity would calm her nerves. It did not.

And then she heard the sound of rapid footsteps ringing against stone. They had an unusual, syncopated cadence, as if someone was descending a staircase. The footfalls quickly grew fainter. Silence returned once again.

At ten minutes, she stopped counting. Time to move.

For a moment, her body refused to respond. It seemed frozen with dread.

What if the man was still out there? What if she found Smithback dead? What if Pendergast was dead, too? Would she be able to run, to resist, to die, rather than be caught herself and face a fate far worse?

Speculation was useless. She would simply follow Pendergast’s orders.

With an immense effort of will, she rose from her crouch, then stepped out of the darkness, easing her way around the open door. The corridor beyond the cell was long and damp, with irregular stone floor and walls, streaked with lime. At the far end was a door that opened into a bright room: the lone source of light, it seemed, in the entire basement. It was in that direction Pendergast had gone; that direction from which the shot had come; that direction from which she’d heard the sound of running feet.

She took a hesitant step forward, and then another, walking on trembling legs toward the brilliant rectangle of light.

FIVE

THE SURGEON COULD hardly believe his eyes. Where Pendergast should have been lying dead in a pool of blood, there was nothing. The man had vanished.

He looked around wildly. It was inconceivable, a physical impossibility… And then he noticed that the section of wall Pendergast had been leaning against was now a door, swiveled parallel to the stone face that surrounded it. A door he never knew existed, despite his diligent searches of the house.

The Surgeon waited, stilling his mind with a great effort of will. Deliberation in all things, he had found, was absolutely necessary for success. It had brought him this far, and with it he would prevail now.

He stepped forward, Pendergast’s gun at the ready. On the far side of the opening, a stone staircase led downward into blackness. The FBI agent obviously wanted him to follow, to descend the staircase whose end was hidden around the dark curve of the stone wall. It could easily be a trap. In fact, it could only be a trap.

But the Surgeon realized he had no choice. He had to stop Pendergast. And he had to find out what lay below. He had a gun, and Pendergast was unarmed, perhaps even wounded by the shot. He paused, briefly, to examine the pistol. The Surgeon knew something about weapons, and he recognized this as a Les Baer custom,45 Government Model. He turned it over in his hands. With the tritium night sights and laser grips, easily a three-thousand-dollar handgun. Pendergast had good taste. Ironic that such a fine weapon would now be used against its owner.

He stepped back from the false wall. Keeping a watchful eye on the stairway, he retrieved a powerful flashlight from a nearby drawer, then darted a regretful glance toward his specimen. The vital signs were beginning to drop now; the operation was clearly spoiled.

He returned to the staircase and shone the flashlight down into the gloom. The imprint of Pendergast’s footsteps was clearly visible in the dust that coated the steps. And there was something else, something besides the footsteps: a drop of blood. And another.

So he had hit Pendergast. Nevertheless, he would have to redouble his caution. Wounded humans, like wounded animals, were always the most dangerous.

He paused at the first step, wondering if he should go after the woman first. Was she still chained to the wall? Or had Pendergast managed to free her, as well? Either way, she posed little danger. The house was a fortress, the basement securely locked. She would be unable to escape. Pendergast remained the more pressing problem. Once he was dead, the remaining resource could be tracked down and forced to take the place of Smithback. He’d made the mistake of listening to Pendergast once. When he found him, he wouldn’t make that mistake again. The man would be dead before he even opened his mouth.

The staircase spiraled down, down, corkscrewing endlessly into the earth. The Surgeon descended slowly, treating each curve as a blind corner behind which Pendergast might be lying in wait. At last he reached the bottom. The stairs debouched into a dark, murky room, heavy with the smell of mildew, damp earth, and — what? Ammonia, salts, benzene, the faint smell of chemicals. There was a flurry of footprints, more drops of blood. Pendergast had stopped here. The Surgeon shone his light on the nearest wall: a row of old brass lanterns, hanging from wooden pegs. One of the pegs was empty.

He took a step to one side, then — using the stone pillar of the staircase as cover — lifted his heavy flashlight and shone it into the gloom.

An astonishing sight met his eye. A wall of jewels seemed to wink back at him: a thousand, ten thousand glittering reflections in myriad colors, like the reflective surface of a fly’s eye under intense magnification. Suppressing his surprise, he moved forward cautiously, gun at the ready.

He found himself in a narrow stone chamber, pillars rising toward a low, arched ceiling. The walls were lined with countless glass bottles of identical shape and size. They were stored on oaken shelving that rose from floor to ceiling, row upon row upon row, crowded densely together, shut up behind rippled glass. He had never seen so many bottles in his life. It looked, in fact, like a museum of liquids.

His breath came faster. Here it was: Leng’s final laboratory. No doubt this was the place where he had perfected the arcanum, his formula for life prolongation. This place must hold the secret for which he had unsuccessfully tortured Leng. He remembered his feeling of disappointment, almost despair, when he’d discovered that Leng’s heart had stopped beating — when he realized he had pushed a little too hard. No matter now: the formula was right here, under his nose, just as Pendergast had said.

But then he remembered what else Pendergast had said: something about Leng working on something completely different. That was absurd, clearly a red herring. What could be bigger than the prolongation of the human life span? What else could this huge collection of chemicals be for, if not that?

He shook these speculations from his mind. Once Pendergast was dealt with and the girl harvested, there would be plenty of time for exploration.

He raked the ground with his light. There was more blood, along with a ragged set of footprints that headed straight through the corridor of bottles. He had to be careful, exceedingly careful. The last thing he wanted to do was begin shooting up these rows of precious liquids, destroying the very treasure he had strived so hard to find. He raised his arm, aimed the handgun, applied pressure to the grip. A small red dot appeared on the far wall. Excellent. Although the laser would not be sighted in precisely, it would nevertheless leave little margin for error.

Releasing his pressure on the laser grip, the Surgeon moved cautiously through the vast apothecary. Each bottle, he could see now, had been meticulously labeled in a spidery script, with both a name and a chemical formula. At the far end, he ducked beneath a low archway into an identical narrow room. The bottles in the next room were full of solid chemicals — chunks of minerals, glittering crystals, ground powders, metal shavings.

It seemed that the arcanum, the formula, was far more complicated than he had envisioned. Why else would Leng need all these chemicals?

He continued following Pendergast’s trail. The footsteps were no longer a single-minded beeline past the endless rows of glass. Instead, the Surgeon began to notice quick detours in the footsteps toward a particular cabinet or other, almost as if the man was looking for something.

In another moment he had reached a Romanesque vault at the end of the forest of cabinets. A hanging tapestry with a fringe of gold brocade covered the archway beyond. He edged nearer, keeping his body once again behind a pillar, and parted the curtain with the gun barrel while shining his torch through the gap. Another room met his eye: larger, broader, filled with oaken cases fronted by glass. Pendergast’s trail led right into the thick of them.

The Surgeon crept forward with infinite care. Again, Pendergast’s tracks seemed to explore the collection, stopping at occasional cases. His tracks had begun to take on an irregular, weaving pattern. It was the spoor of a gravely wounded animal. The blood was not diminishing. If anything, the bleeding was getting worse. Almost certainly that meant a shot to the gut. There was no need to hurry, to force a confrontation. The longer he waited, the weaker Pendergast would become.

He reached a spot where a larger pool of blood shone in the beam of his flashlight. Clearly, Pendergast had stopped here. He had been looking at something, and the Surgeon peered into the case to see what it was. It wasn’t more chemicals, as he had assumed. Instead, the case was filled with thousands of mounted insects, all exactly alike. It was an odd-looking bug with sharp horns on its iridescent head. He moved to the next case. Strange: this contained bottles housing only insect parts. Here were bottles filled with gossamer dragonfly wings, while over there were others with what looked like curled-up abdomens of honeybees. Yet others held innumerable tiny, dried-up white spiders. He moved to the next case. It contained desiccated salamanders and wrinkled frogs in a multitude of bright colors; a row of jars containing a variety of scorpion tails; other jars full of numberless evil-looking wasps. In the next case were jars holding small dried fish, snails, and other insects the Surgeon had never seen before. It was like some vast witch’s cabinet for brewing potions and concocting spells.

It was quite strange that Leng had felt the need for such a vast collection of potions and chemicals. Perhaps, like Isaac Newton, he had ended up wasting his life in alchemical experiments. The “ultimate project” Pendergast mentioned might not be a red herring, after all. It could very well have been some useless attempt to turn lead into gold, or similar fool’s challenge.

Pendergast’s trail led out of the cabinets and through another arched doorway. The Surgeon followed, gun at the ready. Beyond lay what looked like a series of smaller rooms — closer to individual stone crypts or vaults, actually — each containing a collection of some kind. Pendergast’s trail weaved back and forth between them. More oaken cabinets, filled with what looked like bark and leaves and dried flowers. He stopped a moment, staring around curiously.

Then he reminded himself that Pendergast was the pressing issue. Judging from the weaving tracks, the man was now having trouble walking.

Of course, knowing Pendergast, it could be a ruse. A new suspicion arose within him, and the Surgeon crouched beside the nearest scattering of crimson droplets, touching his fingers to one, rubbing them together. Then he tasted it. No doubt about it: human blood, and still warm. There could be no way of faking that. Pendergast was definitely wounded. Gravely wounded.

He stood up, raised the gun again, and moved stealthily forward, his flashlight probing the velvety darkness ahead.

SIX

NORA STEPPED WARILY through the doorway. After the darkness of the cell, the light was so bright that she shrank back into shadow, temporarily blinded. Then she came forward again.

As her eyes adjusted, objects began to take form. Metal tables, covered with gleaming instruments. An empty gurney. An open door, leading onto a descending staircase of rough-hewn stone. And a figure, strapped facedown onto a stainless steel operating table. Except the table was different from others she had seen. Gutters ran down its sides into a collecting chamber, full now with blood and fluid. It was the kind of table used for an autopsy, not an operation.

The head and torso of the figure, as well as the waist and legs, were covered by pale green sheets. Only the lower back remained exposed. As Nora came forward, she could see a ghastly wound: a red gash almost two feet long. Metal retractors had been set, spreading the edges of the wound apart. She could see the exposed spinal column, pale gray amidst the pinks and reds of exposed flesh. The wound had bled freely, red coagulating tributaries that had flowed down either side of the vertical cut, across the table, and into the metal gutters.

Nora knew, even without drawing back the sheet, that the body was Smithback’s. She suppressed a cry.

She tried to steady herself, remembering what Pendergast had said. There were things that needed to be done. And the first was to verify that Smithback was dead.

She took a step forward, glancing quickly around the operating theater. An IV rack stood beside the table, its clear narrow tube snaking down and disappearing beneath the green sheets. Nearby was a large metal box on wheels, its panel festooned with tubes and dials — probably a ventilator. Several bloody scalpels sat in a metal basin. On a nearby surgical tray were forceps, sterile sponges, a squirt bottle of Betadine solution. Other instruments lay in a scatter on the gurney, where they had apparently been dropped when the surgery was interrupted.

She glanced at the head of the table, at the rack of machines monitoring the vital signs. She recognized an EKG screen, a ghostly line of green tracing a course from left to right. Tracing a heartbeat. My God, she thought suddenly, is it possible Bill’s still alive?

Nora took a rapid step forward, reached over the gaping incision, and lifted the sheet away from his shoulders. Smithback’s features came into view: the familiar tousled hair with the unrepentant cowlick, the skinny arms and shoulders, the curl of hair at the nape of his neck. She reached forward and touched his neck, felt the faint pulse of the carotid artery.

He was alive. But barely.

Had he been drugged? What should she do? How could she save him?

She realized she was hyperventilating, and struggled to slow both her breathing and her thoughts. She scanned the machines, thinking back to the pre-med classes she’d taken in college; to the courses in gross anatomy, biological and forensic anthropology in graduate school; her brief experience as a hospital candy striper.

She quickly moved on to the next machine, trying to frame the overall situation. The machine was clearly a blood pressure monitor. She glanced at the systolic and diastolic readouts: 91 over 60. At least he had pressure as well as pulse. But it seemed low, too low. Beside it was another machine, connected to a line leading to a clip on Smithback’s index finger. Nora’s uncle had worn one of these when he’d been in the hospital a year before, suffering from congestive heart failure: it was a pulse-oximeter. It shone a light upon the fingernail, and measured the oxygen saturation of the blood. The readout was 80. Could that be right? She seemed to recall that anything less than 95 was cause for concern.

Nora looked back now at the EKG machine, at the pulse readout in its lower right corner. It stood at 125.

Abruptly, the blood pressure meter began bleating a warning.

She knelt toward Smithback, listening to his breathing. It was rapid and shallow, barely audible.

She straightened, gazing around at the machines with a moan of despair. God, she had to do something. She couldn’t move him; that would mean certain death. Whatever she did, she would have to do it here and now. If she couldn’t help him, Smithback would die.

She fought to control her panic, struggled with her memory. What did this all mean: low blood pressure; abnormally fast heart rate; low blood oxygen?

Exsanguination. She looked at the appalling pool of blood in the collecting basin at the bottom of the table. Smithback was suffering from massive blood loss.

How did the body react in such cases? She thought back to the distant lectures she’d only half paid attention to. First, by tachycardia, as the heart beat faster in an attempt to profuse the tissues with oxygen. Next, by — what was the damn term? — vasospasm. She quickly stretched out a hand, felt Smithback’s fingers. As she expected, they were ice cold, the skin mottled. The body had shut down blood to the extremities to maximize oxygen in the critical areas.

The blood pressure would be the last to go. And Smithback’s was already dropping. After that…

She did not want to think about what would happen after that.

A wave of sickness passed over her. This was insane. She wasn’t a doctor. Anything she did could easily make things worse.

She took a deep breath, staring at the raw wound, forcing herself to concentrate. Even if she knew how, closing and suturing the incision would not help: the blood loss was already too great. There was no plasma around for a blood transfusion, and had there been any, administering a transfusion was beyond her abilities.

But she knew that patients who had lost a lot of blood could be rehydrated with crystalloids or a saline solution.

She looked again at the IV rack beside the table. A thousand-cc bag of saline solution hung from it, tube drooping down from the metal stand and into the vein in Smithback’s wrist. The stopcock had been shut off. A hypodermic syringe, half empty, dangled near the bottom, its needle inserted into the tube. She realized what it was: a local monitored anaesthetic, probably Versed, given as a drip because Versed doesn’t last much more than five minutes. It would keep the victim conscious, but reduce any resistance, perhaps. Why hadn’t the Surgeon used general, or spinal, anesthesia for the procedure?

It didn’t matter. The point was to replace Smithback’s fluids as quickly as possible, get his blood pressure up — and here were the means to do it.

She plucked the hypodermic from the IV tube and threw it across the room. Then, reaching for the stopcock at the base of the liter bag of saline, she turned it clockwise as far as it would go.

It isn’t enough, she thought as she watched the solution drip rapidly through the tube. It’s not enough to replace the fluid volume. Oh, Jesus, what else can I do?

But there seemed to be nothing else she could do.

She stepped back, helplessly, eyes darting once again to the machines. Smithback’s pulse had risen to 140. Even more alarmingly, his blood pressure had dropped to 80 over 45.

She leaned toward the gurney, took Smithback’s cold, still hand in hers.

“Damn you, Bill,” she whispered, pressing his hand. “You’ve got to make it. You’ve got to.”

She waited, motionless beneath the lights, her eyes fixed on the monitors.

SEVEN

IN THE STONE CHAMBERS deep beneath 891 Riverside, the air smelled of dust, ancient fungus, and ammonia. Pendergast moved painfully through the darkness, lifting the hood from the lantern infrequently, as much to inspect Leng’s cabinet as to get his bearings. He paused, breathing hard, at the center of a room full of glass jars and specimen trays. He listened intently. His hyperacute ears picked up the sound of Fairhaven’s stealthy footsteps. They were at most one, perhaps two chambers away. There was so little time. He was gravely wounded, without a weapon, bleeding heavily. If he was to find any way to level the playing field, it would have to come from the cabinet itself. The only way to defeat Fairhaven was to understand Leng’s ultimate project — to understand why Leng had been prolonging his life.

He uncovered the lantern again and examined the cabinet in front of him. The jars contained dried insects, shimmering with iridescence in the beam of light. The jar was labeled Pseudopena velenatus, which Pendergast recognized as the false featherwing beetle from the Mato Grosso swamps, a mildly poisonous insect natives used for medicine. In the row below, another series of jars contained the dried-up corpses of deadly Ugandan bog spiders in brilliant purples and yellows. Pendergast moved down the case, uncloaked the lantern again. Here were bottle after bottle of dried lizards: the harmless albino cave gekko from Costa Rica, a bottle full of dried saliva glands from the Gila monster of the Sonoran Desert, two jars full of the shriveled corpses of the tiny red-bellied lizard of Australia. Farther along were numberless cockroaches, from the giant Madagascar hissing cockroaches to beautiful green Cuban roaches, winking in their jars like tiny emerald leaves.

Pendergast realized these creatures had not been collected for taxonomic or classification purposes. One did not need a thousand bog spiders in order to do taxonomic studies — and drying insects was a poor way to preserve their biological details. And they were arranged in these cabinets in no conceivable taxonomic order.

There was only one answer: these insects had been collected because of the complex chemical compounds they contained. This was a collection of biologically active compounds, pure and simple. It was, in fact, a continuation of the inorganic chemical cabinets he had observed in the preceding rooms.

Pendergast now felt even more certain that this grand, subterranean cabinet of curiosities — this stupendous collection of chemicals — was directly related to Leng’s real work. The collections here perfectly filled the hole he’d noticed in the collections displayed in the house above. This was Antoine Leng Pendergast’s ultimate cabinet of curiosities.

In contrast to those other collections, however, this was clearly a working cabinet: many of the jars were only partially full, and some almost empty. Whatever Leng had been doing had required an enormous variety of chemical compounds. But what had he been doing? What was this grand project?

Pendergast covered the lantern again, trying to will the pain away long enough to think. According to his great-aunt, just before heading north to New York, Leng had talked of saving the human race. He remembered the word his great-aunt had used: healing. Leng would heal the world. This vast cabinet of chemicals and compounds was central to that project. It was something Leng believed would benefit humanity.

Pendergast felt a sudden spasm of pain that threatened to bend him double. With a supreme effort of will, he recovered. He had to keep going, to keep looking for the answer.

He moved out of the forest of cabinets, through an archway of hanging tapestries, into the next room. As he moved, he was racked by a second intense spasm of pain. He stopped, waiting for it to pass.

The trick he’d intended to play on Fairhaven — ducking through the secret panel without being shot — had required exquisite timing. During their encounter, Pendergast had watched Fairhaven’s face intently. Almost without exception, people betrayed by their expression the moment they decided to kill, to pull the trigger, to end the life of another. But Fairhaven had given no such signal. He had pulled the trigger with a coolness that had taken Pendergast by surprise. The man had used Pendergast’s own custom Colt. It was regarded as one of the most dependable and accurate.45 semiautomatics available, and Fairhaven clearly knew how to use it. If it hadn’t been for the man’s pause in breathing just before squeezing off the shot, Pendergast would have taken the bullet dead center and been killed instantly.

Instead, he had taken the bullet in his side. It had passed just below the left rib cage and penetrated into the peritoneal cavity. In as detached a way as possible, Pendergast once again considered the precise form and nature of the pain. The bullet had, at the very least, ruptured his spleen and perhaps perforated the splenetic flexure of the colon. It had missed the abdominal aorta — he would have bled to death otherwise — but it must have nicked either the left colic vein or some tributaries of the portal vein, because the blood loss was still grave. The law enforcement Black Talon slug had done extensive damage: the wound would prove fatal if not treated within a few hours. Worse, it was severely debilitating him, slowing him down. The pain was excruciating, but for the most part he could manage pain. He could not, however, manage the growing numbness that was enfeebling his limbs. His body, bruised from the recent fall and still not fully recovered from the knife wound, had no reserves to fall back on. He was fading fast.

Once again, motionless in the dark, Pendergast reviewed how his plans had miscarried; how he had miscalculated. From the beginning, he had known this would be the most difficult case of his career. But what he had not anticipated were his own psychological shortcomings. He had cared too much; the case had become too important to him. It had colored his judgment, crippled his objectivity. And now for the first time he realized that there was a possibility — indeed, a high probability — of failure. And failure meant not only his own death — which was inconsequential — but also the deaths of Nora, Smithback, and many other innocent people in the future.

Pendergast paused to explore the wound with his hand. The bleeding was growing worse. He slipped off his jacket and tied it as tightly as he could around his lower torso. Then he uncloaked the lantern and, once again, held it briefly aloft.

He was in a smaller room now, and he was surprised at what he found. Instead of more chemical compounds, the tiny space was crowded with cases of birds, stuffed with cotton. Migrating birds. All arranged taxonomically. A superb collection, even including a suite of now-extinct passenger pigeons. But how did this collection fit with the rest? Pendergast felt staggered. He knew, deep down, that all this fit together, was part of some great plan. But what plan?

He stumbled on, jostling his wound as little as possible, into the next room. He lifted his light once again, and this time froze in utter astonishment.

Here was a collection entirely different from the others. The lantern revealed a bizarre aggregation of clothing and accessories, arrayed on dressmaker’s dummies and in cases along both walls: rings, collars, hats, fountain pens, umbrellas, dresses, gloves, shoes, watches, necklaces, cravats — all carefully preserved and arranged as if in a museum, but this time with no apparent systemization. It seemed very unlike Leng, this haphazard collection from the past two thousand years, from all over the world. What did a nineteenth-century Parisian man’s white kid glove have to do with a medieval gorget? And what did a pair of ancient Roman earrings have to do with an English umbrella, or to the Rolex watch sitting next to it, or to the flapper-era high-heeled shoes beside that? Pendergast moved painfully forward. Against the far wall, in another case, were door handles of all kinds — none holding the slightest aesthetic or artistic interest — beside a row of eighteenth-century men’s powdered wigs.

Pendergast hid the lantern, pondering. It was an utterly bizarre collection of commonplace objects, none of them particularly distinguished, arranged without regard to period or category. Yet here they were, preserved in cases as if they were the most precious objects in the world.

As he stood in the dark, listening to the drip of his blood against the stone floor, Pendergast wondered for the first time if Leng had not, in the end, gone mad. This certainly seemed the last collection of a madman. Perhaps, as he prolonged his life, the brain had deteriorated even while the body had not. This grotesque collection made no sense.

Pendergast shook his head. Once again, he was reacting emotionally, allowing his judgment to be affected by feelings of familial guilt. Leng had not gone mad. No madman could have assembled the collections he had just passed through, perhaps the greatest collection of chemicals, inorganic and organic, the world had ever seen. The tawdry objects in this room were related. There was a systematic arrangement here, if only he could see it. The key to Leng’s project was here. He had to understand what Leng was doing, and why. Otherwise…

Then he heard the scrape of a foot on stone, saw the beam of Fairhaven’s flashlight lance over him. Suddenly, the small red dot of a laser appeared on the front of his shirt. He threw himself sideways just as the crash of the gun sounded in the confined space.

He felt the bullet strike his right elbow, a sledgehammer blow that knocked him off his feet. He lay on the ground for a moment, as the laser licked through the dusty air. Then he rolled to his feet and limped forward, ducking from case to case as he crossed the room.

He had allowed himself to become distracted by the strange collection; he had neglected to listen for Fairhaven’s approach. Once again, he had failed. With this thought came the realization that, for the first time, he was about to lose.

He took another step forward, cradling his shattered elbow. The bullet seemed to have passed above the medial supracondlar ridge and exited near the coronoid process of the ulna. It would aggravate the blood loss, render him incapable of resistance. He must get to the next room. Each room had its own clues, and perhaps the next would reveal Leng’s secret. But as he moved a wave of dizziness hit him, followed by a stab of nausea. He swayed, steadied himself.

Using the reflected light of Fairhaven’s searching beam, he ducked beneath an archway into the next room. The exertion of the fall, the shock of the second bullet, had drained the last of his energy, and the heavy curtain of unconsciousness drew ever closer. He leaned back against the inside wall, breathing hard, eyes wide against the darkness.

The flashlight beam stabbed abruptly through the archway, then flicked away again. In its brief illumination, Pendergast saw the glitter of glass; rows of beakers and retorts; columnar distillation setups rising like city spires above long worktables.

He had penetrated Enoch Leng’s secret lab.

EIGHT

NORA STOOD OVER the metal table, her gaze moving from the monitoring machines to Smithback’s pallid form, then back again. She had removed the retractors, cleaned and dressed the wound as best she could. The bleeding had finally stopped. But the damage was already done. The blood pressure machine continued to sound its dire warning. She glanced toward the saline bag: it was almost empty, but the catheter was small, and even at maximum volume it would be difficult to replenish lost fluids quickly enough.

She turned abruptly as the sound of a second shot echoed up from the dark staircase. It sounded faint, muffled, as if coming from deep underground.

For a moment she stood motionless, lanced by fear. What had happened? Had Pendergast shot — or been shot?

Then she turned back toward Smithback’s inert form. Only one man was going to come up that staircase: Pendergast, or the other. When the time came, she’d deal with it. Right now, her responsibility lay with Smithback. And she wasn’t going to leave him.

She glanced back at the vitals: blood pressure down to 70 over 35; the heart rate slowing too, now, down to 80 beats per minute. At first, this latter development sent relief coursing through her. But then another thought struck, and she raised her palm to Smithback’s forehead. It was growing as cold as his limbs had been.

Bradycardia, she thought, as panic replaced the transitory feeling of relief. When blood loss is persistent, and there are no more areas for the body to shut down, the patient decompensates. The critical areas start to go. The heart slows. And then stops for good.

Hand still on Smithback’s forehead, Nora turned her frantic gaze back to the EKG. It looked strangely diminished, the spikes smaller, the frequency slower. The pulse was now 50 beats per minute.

She dropped her hands to Smithback’s shoulders, shook him roughly. “Bill!” she cried. “Bill, damn it, come on! Please!”

The peeping of the EKG grew erratic. Slowed.

There was nothing more she could do.

She stared at the monitors for a moment, a horrible feeling of powerlessness stealing over her. And then she closed her eyes and let her head sink onto Smithback’s shoulder: bare, motionless, cold as a marble tomb.

NINE

PENDERGAST STUMBLED PAST the long tables of the old laboratory. Another spasm of pain wracked his gut and he paused momentarily, mentally willing it to pass. Despite the severity of his wounds, he had so far managed to keep one corner of his mind clear, sharp, free of distraction. He tried to focus on that corner through the thickening fog of pain; tried to observe and understand what lay around him.

Titration and distillation apparatuses, beakers and retorts, burners; a vast thicket of glassware and metal. And yet, despite the extent of the equipment, there seemed to be few clues to the project Leng had been working on. Chemistry was chemistry, and you used the same tools and equipment, regardless of what chemicals you were synthesizing or isolating. There were a larger number of hoods and vintage glove boxes than Pendergast expected, implying that Leng had been handling poisons or radioactive substances in his laboratory. But even this merely corroborated what he had already surmised.

The only surprise had been the state of the laboratory. There was no mass spectrometer, no X-ray diffraction equipment, no electrophoresis apparatus, and certainly no DNA sequencer. No computers, nothing that seemed to contain any integrated circuits. There was nothing to reflect the revolution in biochemistry technology that had occurred since the 1960s. Judging by the age of the equipment and its neglected condition, it looked, in fact, as if all work in the lab had ceased around fifty years before.

But that made no sense. Leng would certainly have availed himself of the latest scientific developments, the most modern equipment, to help him in his quest. And, until very recently, the man had been alive.

Could Leng have finished his project? If so, where was it? What was it? Was it somewhere in this vast basement? Or had he given up?

The flicker of Fairhaven’s light was licking closer now, and Pendergast ceased speculating and forced himself onward. There was a door in the far wall, and he dragged himself toward it through an overwhelming wash of pain. If this was Leng’s laboratory, there would be no more than one, perhaps two, final workrooms beyond. He felt an almost overpowering wave of dizziness. He had reached the point where he could barely walk. The endgame had arrived.

And still he didn’t know.

Pendergast pushed the door ajar, took five steps into the next room. He uncloaked the lantern and tried to raise it to get his bearings, examine the room’s contents, make one final attempt at resolving the mystery.

And then his legs buckled beneath him.

As he fell, the lantern crashed to the floor, rolling away, its light flickering crazily across the walls. And along the walls, a hundred edges of sharpened steel reflected the light back toward him.

TEN

THE SURGEON SHONE the light hungrily around the chamber as the echoes of the second shot died away. The beam illuminated moth-eaten clothing, ancient wooden display cases, motes of disturbed dust hanging in the air. He was certain he had hit Pendergast again.

The first shot, the gut shot, had been the more severe. It would be painful, debilitating, a wound that would grow steadily worse. The last kind of wound you wanted when you were trying to escape. The second shot had hit a limb — an arm, no doubt, given that the FBI agent could still walk. Exceedingly painful, and with luck it might have nicked the basilic vein, adding to Pendergast’s loss of blood.

He stopped where Pendergast had fallen. There was a small spray of blood against a nearby cabinet, and a heavier smear where the agent had obviously rolled across the ground. He stepped back, glancing around with a feeling of contempt. It was another of Leng’s absurd collections. The man had been a neurotic collector, and the basement was of a piece with the rest of the house. There would be no arcanum here, no philosopher’s stone. Pendergast had obviously been trying to throw him off balance with that talk of Leng’s ultimate purpose. What purpose could be more grand than the prolongation of the human life span? And if this ridiculous collection of umbrellas and walking sticks and wigs was an example of Leng’s ultimate project, then it merely corroborated how unfit he was for his own discovery. Perhaps with the long, cloistered years had come madness. Although Leng had seemed quite sane when he’d first confronted him, six months before — as much as one could tell anything from such a silent, ascetic fellow — appearances meant nothing. One never knew what went on inside a man’s head. But in the end, it made no difference. Clearly, the discovery was destined for him. Leng was only a vessel to bring this stupendous advancement across the years. Like John the Baptist, he had merely paved the way. The elixir was Fairhaven’s destiny. God had placed it in his path. He would be Leng, as Leng should have been — perhaps would have been, had it not been for his weaknesses, his fatal flaws.

Once he had achieved success, he, Fairhaven, would not hole up like a recluse in this house to let the years roll endlessly by. Once the transformation was complete — once he had perfected the elixir, absorbed all Leng had to give into himself — he would emerge, like a butterfly from a pupa. He would put his long life to wonderful use: travel, love, learning, pleasure, exotic experiences. Money would never be a problem.

The Surgeon forced himself to put aside these reflections and once again take up Pendergast’s irregular path. The footprints were growing smudged at the heels: the man was dragging his feet along the ground. Of course, Pendergast could be faking the gravity of his wound, but Fairhaven sensed he wasn’t. One couldn’t fake that heavy loss of blood. And the man couldn’t fake that he had been hit — not once, but twice.

Following the trail of blood, he crept through the archway in the far wall and entered the next room. His flashlight revealed what looked like an ancient laboratory: long tables set up with all manner of strange glassware, racked into fantastic shapes, tubes and coils and retorts mounting almost to the ceiling of undressed rock. It was old and dusty, the test tubes caked with rust-colored deposits. Leng clearly hadn’t used the place in years. On the nearest table, one of the racks had rusted through, causing glassware to fall and shatter into pieces on the dark woodwork.

Pendergast’s ragged steps went straight through this lab, without stopping, to a door on the far side. Fairhaven followed more quickly now, gun raised, steady pressure on the trigger. It’s time, he thought to himself as he approached the door. Time to finish this.

ELEVEN

AS HE ENTERED the room, Fairhaven immediately saw Pendergast: on his knees, head drooping, in a widening pool of blood. There was to be no more hiding, no more evading, no more clever dissembling.

The man reminded Fairhaven of the way an animal died when gut-shot. It didn’t instantly keel over dead. Instead, it happened in stages. First, the animal stood there, shocked, trembling slightly. Then it slowly kneeled, holding the position for a minute or more, as if praying. Then its rear legs collapsed into a sitting position. And there it might remain for several minutes before suddenly rolling onto its side. The slow-motion ballet always ended with a spasm, that violent jerk of the legs at the moment of death.

Pendergast was in the second stage. He could survive as much as a few more hours — helpless as a baby, of course. But he wasn’t going to live that long. The chase had been diverting, but pressing business remained upstairs. Smithback was spoiled by now, but the girl was waiting.

The Surgeon approached Pendergast, gun hand extended, allowing himself to briefly savor the triumph. The clever, the diabolically cunning Special Agent Pendergast lay before him: stuporous, unresisting. Then he stepped back to give himself room for the final shot and, without much curiosity, raised his light to illuminate the room. He wouldn’t want to spoil anything with his bullet, on the remote chance this room contained anything useful.

He was amazed at what he saw. Yet another bizarre collection of Leng’s. Only this one was different. This was all weapons and armor. Swords, daggers, crossbows and bolts, harquebuses, lances, arrows, maces were mixed higgledy-piggledy with more modern guns, rifles, blackjacks, grenades, and rocket launchers. There were also medieval suits of armor, iron helmets, chain-mail, Crimean, Spanish-American, and World War I army helmets; early bulletproof vests and stacks of ammunition — a veritable arsenal, dating from Roman times to the early twentieth century.

The Surgeon shook his head. The irony was incredible. If Pendergast had been able to get here a few minutes earlier, in better condition, he could have armed himself with enough firepower to fight off a battalion. The contest might have gone very differently. But as it was, he’d spent too much time browsing the earlier collections. He’d arrived here a little too late. Now he lay there in his own blood, half dead, lantern near his feet. Fairhaven barked a laugh, his voice ringing off the vaults, and raised the gun.

The sound of laughter seemed to rouse the agent, who looked up at him, eyes glassy. “All I ask is that you make it quick,” he said.

Don’t let him speak, the voice said. Just kill him.

Fairhaven aimed the gun, placing Pendergast’s head squarely before the center dot of the tritium sights. A solid hit with a hollow-point bullet would effectively decapitate the FBI agent. It would be about as quick as you could get. His finger tightened on the trigger.

And then something occurred to him.

Quick was a lot more than Pendergast deserved. The man had caused him a lot of grief. Pendergast had dogged his trail; ruined his latest specimen; brought him anxiety and suffering at the very moment of triumph.

As he stood over the agent, he felt a hatred rise within him; the hatred he had felt for the other one, Leng, who had looked so similar. The hatred he had felt for the trustees and professors of his medical school, who had refused to share his vision. Hatred for the pettiness and small-mindedness that kept people like him from achieving their true greatness.

So Pendergast wanted it quick? Not with this arsenal at his disposal.

He walked over to Pendergast and once again searched the unresisting man carefully, recoiling a little from the warm sticky blood that soaked his side. Nothing. The man had not been able to slip a weapon from the surrounding walls. In fact, he could see that Pendergast’s faltering footsteps led directly to the center of the room, where he had collapsed. But it would do to be careful. Pendergast, even in this pathetic state, was dangerous. If he tried to talk, it would be best to just shoot him. Words, in the mouth of this man, were subtle and pernicious.

He looked around again, more carefully this time. There was every weapon imaginable on the walls. He had read histories of some of them, studied others in museums. The choice would prove amusing.

The word fun came to mind.

Always keeping Pendergast in his field of vision, Fairhaven shone his light around, finally selecting a bejeweled sword. He plucked it from the wall, hefted it, turned it around in the beam of the flashlight. It would have served his purpose, except it was rather heavy, and the blade was so rusty it looked as if it wouldn’t cut butter. Besides, the handle was sticky and unpleasant. He hung it back up on the shelf, wiping his hands on his surgical cloth.

Pendergast was still sitting, watching him with pale, cloudy eyes. Fairhaven grinned. “Got any preferences?”

There was no reply, but Fairhaven could see a look of profound distress cross the agent’s face.

“That’s right, Agent Pendergast. ‘Quick’ is no longer in the cards.”

A slight, terrified widening of the eyes was Pendergast’s only response. It was enough. The Surgeon felt a swell of satisfaction.

He moved along the collections, picked up a dagger with a handle of gold and silver, turned it over, laid it down. Next to it was a helmet shaped like a man’s head, with spikes inside that you could screw closed, driving the spikes bit by bit through the skull. Too primitive, too messy. Hanging on the wall nearby was an oversized leather funnel. He’d heard of this: the torturer would jam it into the victim’s mouth, then pour water down the victim’s throat until the poor wretch either drowned or exploded. Exotic, but too time-consuming. Nearby was a large wheel on which people could be broken — too much trouble. A cat-o’-nine tails, studded with iron hooks. He hefted it, lashed it overhead, laid it back down, again wiping his hands. The stuff was filthy. All this junk had probably been hanging around in Leng’s dingy subbasement for more than a century.

There had to be something here that would be suitable for his needs. And then his eye fell on an executioner’s axe.

“What do you know?” said Fairhaven, his smile broadening. “Perhaps you’ll get your wish, after all.”

He plucked the axe from its mounting hooks and gave it a few swings. The wooden shaft was almost five feet long, fitted with several rows of dull brass nails. It was heavy, but well balanced and sharp as a razor. It made a whistling noise as it cut through the air. Sitting below the axe was the second part of the executioner’s outfit: a tree stump, well worn and covered with a dark patina. A semicircle had been hollowed from it, clearly intended to receive the neck. It had been well used, as many chop marks attested. He set down the axe, rolled the block over to Pendergast, tipped it flat, positioned the block in front of the agent.

Suddenly, Pendergast resisted, struggling feebly, and the Surgeon gave him a brutal kick in the side. Pendergast went rigid with pain, then abruptly fell limp. The Surgeon had a brief, unpleasant sensation of déjà vu, remembering how he had pushed Leng just a little too hard and ended up with a corpse. But no: Pendergast was still conscious. His eyes, though clouded with pain, remained open. He would be present and conscious when the axe fell. He knew what was coming. That was important to the Surgeon: very important.

And now another thought occurred to him. He recalled how, when Anne Boleyn was to be put to death, she’d sent for a French executioner, skilled in the art of decapitating with a sword. It was a cleaner, quicker, surer death than an axe. She had knelt, head erect, with no unseemly block. And she had tipped the man well.

The Surgeon hefted the axe in his hands. It seemed heavy, heavier than it had before. But surely he could swing it true. It would be an interesting challenge to do without the block.

He shoved the block away with his foot. Pendergast was already kneeling as if he had arranged himself in position, hands limp at his sides, head drooping, helpless and resigned.

“Your struggles cost you that quick death you asked for,” he said. “But I’m sure we’ll have it off in — oh — no more than two or three strokes. Either way, you’re about to experience something I’ve always wondered about. After the head goes rolling off, how long does the body remain conscious? Do you see the world spinning around as your head falls into the basket of sawdust? When the executioner raised the heads in Tower Yard, crying out ‘Behold the head of a traitor!’ the eyes and lips continued to move. Did they actually see their own headless corpse?”

He gave the axe a practice swing. Why was it so heavy? And yet he was enjoying drawing out this moment. “Did you know that Charlotte Corday, who was guillotined for assassinating Marat during the French Revolution, blushed after the assistant executioner slapped her severed head before the assembled crowd? Or how about the pirate captain who was caught and sentenced to death? They lined up his men in a row. And they told him that after he was beheaded, whichever men he managed to walk past would be reprieved. So they cut off his head as he stood, and wouldn’t you know it, but that headless captain began to walk along the row of men, one step at a time. The executioner was so upset that he wouldn’t have any more victims that he stuck out his foot and tripped the captain.”

With this the Surgeon roared with laughter. Pendergast did not join in.

“Ah well,” Fairhaven said. “I guess I’ll never know how long consciousness lasts after one has lost one’s head. But you will. Shortly.”

He raised the axe over his right shoulder, like a bat, and took careful aim.

“Give my regards to your great-grand-uncle,” he said, as he tensed his muscles to deliver the stroke.

TWELVE

NORA PILLOWED HER head on Smithback’s shoulder, tears seeping through her closed eyelids. She felt weak with despair. She had done all she could — and yet, all she could was not enough.

And then, through the fog of grief, she realized something: the beeping of the EKG had steadied.

She quickly raised her head, glanced at the monitors. Blood pressure had stabilized, and the pulse had risen slightly, to 60 beats per minute.

She stood in the chill room, trembling. In the end, the saline solution had made the crucial difference. Thank you. Thank you.

Smithback was still alive. But he was far from out of the woods. If she didn’t further replenish his fluid volume, he’d slip into shock.

The saline bag was empty. She glanced around the room, spotted a small refrigerator, opened it. Inside were half a dozen liter bags of similar solution, feeder lines wrapped around them. She pulled one out, detached the old line from the catheter, removed the empty bag from the IV rack and tossed it aside, then hung the new bag and attached its line. She watched the fluid dribble rapidly down the clear tube. Throughout, Smithback’s vital signs remained weak but stable. With any luck, he’d make it — if she could get him out of here and to a hospital.

She examined the gurney. It was on wheels, but detachable. There were straps. If she could find a way out of the basement, she just might be able to drag the gurney up a flight of stairs. It was worth a try.

She searched through the nearby cabinets, pulled out half a dozen green surgical sheets, and covered Smithback with them. She plucked a medical light from one of the cabinets, slipped it into her pocket. She gave another glance at the monitors at the head of the operating table, another look into the dark opening that led down into darkness. It was from there that the sound of the second shot had come. But the way out of the house lay up, not down. She hated to leave Smithback, if only for a moment, but it was vital he get real medical attention as soon as possible.

She pulled the flashlight from her pocket and, crossing the room, stepped through the doorway into the stone corridor beyond.

It was the work of five minutes to explore the basement, a warren of narrow passages and small damp rooms, all of the same undressed stone. The passages were low and dark, and she lost her way more than once. She found the crashed elevator — and, tragically, the corpse of O’Shaughnessy — but the elevator was inoperable, and there was no way up the shaft. Ultimately, she found a massive iron door, banded and riveted, which clearly led upstairs. It was locked. Pendergast, she thought, might be able to pick the lock — but then Pendergast wasn’t here.

At last she returned to the operating room, chilled and despondent. If there was another way out of the basement, it was too well hidden for her to find. They were locked in.

She approached the unconscious Smithback and caressed his brown hair. Once again, her eye fell on the opening in the wall that gave onto a descending staircase. It was pitch black, silent. She realized it had been silent for what seemed a long time, ever since the second shot. What could have happened? she wondered. Could Pendergast…

“Nora?”

Smithback’s voice was barely a whisper. She glanced down quickly. His eyes were open, his pale face tight with pain.

“Bill!” she cried, grabbing his hands. “Thank God.”

“This is getting old,” he murmured.

At first, she thought he was delirious. “What?”

“Getting hurt, waking up to find you ministering to me. The same thing happened in Utah, remember? Once was enough.” He tried to smile, but his face contorted in agony.

“Bill, don’t talk,” she said, stroking his cheek. “You’re going to be okay. We’re going to get you out of here. I’ll find a—”

But — mercifully — he had already slipped back into unconsciousness.

She glanced at the vitals and felt a huge rush of relief. They had improved — slightly. The saline bag continued to deliver critical fluid.

And then she heard the scream.

It came up from the dark stairs, faint and muffled. Nevertheless it was the most frightening, bone-chilling sound she had ever heard. It started at a high, tearing pitch: shrill, inhuman. It remained at a piercing high for what seemed at least a minute, then began wavering, ululating, before dropping into a gasping, slobbering growl. And then there was the distant clang of metal against stone.

And then, silence once again.

She stared at the opening in the wall, mind racing through the possibilities. What had happened? Was Pendergast dead? His opponent? Were they both dead?

If Pendergast was hurt, she had to help him. He’d be able to pick the lock on the iron door, or find some other way for them to get Smithback out of this hell-hole. On the other hand — if the Surgeon was still alive, and Pendergast dead — she’d have to face him sooner or later anyway. It might as well be sooner: and on her own terms. She was damned if she was going to wait up here, a sitting duck, for the Surgeon to return and pick her off — and then finish the job on Smithback.

She plucked a large-bladed scalpel from the surgical stand. Then — holding the light in one hand and the scalpel in the other — she approached the doorway that led down into the subbasement.

The narrow stone panel, swung to one side, had been perfectly disguised to look part of the wall. Beyond was a pool of blackness. Shining the beam ahead of her, she began descending, slowly and silently.

Reaching the last turn at the bottom, she turned off the light and waited, heart beating rapidly, wondering what to do. If she shone her light around, it might betray her presence, give the Surgeon — if he was waiting out there in the darkness — a perfect target. But with the light off, she simply could not proceed.

The light was a risk she’d have to take. She snapped it back on, stepped out of the stairwell, then gasped involuntarily.

She was in a long, narrow room, crowded floor to ceiling with bottles. Her powerful beam, lancing through the endless rows, cast myriad glittering colors about the room, making her feel as if she was somehow inside a window of stained glass.

More collections. What could all this mean?

But there was no time to pause, no time to wonder. Two sets of footprints led on into the darkness ahead. And there was blood on the dusty floor.

She moved through the room as quickly as she could, beneath an archway and into another room filled with more bottles. The trail of footsteps continued on. At the end of this room was another archway, covered by a fringed tapestry.

She turned off her light and advanced toward it. There she waited, in the pitch black, listening. There was no sound. With infinite care, she drew back the tapestry and peered into the darkness. She could see nothing. The room beyond seemed empty, but there was no way to be sure: she would simply have to take a chance. She took a deep breath, switched on her light.

The beam illuminated a larger room, filled with wooden display cases. She hurried ahead, sidestepping from case to case, to an archway in the far wall that led on into a series of smaller vaults. She ducked into the nearest and turned off her light again, listening for any sound that might indicate that her presence had been noticed. Nothing. Turning on the light again, she moved forward, into a room whose cases were filled with frogs and lizards, snakes and roaches, spiders of infinite shapes and colors. Was there no end to Leng’s cabinet?

At the far end of the room, before another low archway that led into further darkness, she again crouched, turning off her light to listen for any noises that might be coming from the room beyond.

It was then she heard the sound.

It came to her faintly, echoing and distorted by its passage through intervening stone. Remote as it was, it instantly chilled her blood: a low, gibbering moan, rising and falling in a fiendish cadence.

She waited a moment, flesh crawling. For a moment, her muscles tensed for an involuntary retreat. But then, with a supreme effort, she steeled herself. Whatever lay beyond, she would have to confront it sooner or later. Pendergast might need her help.

She gathered up her courage, switched on her light, and sprinted forward. She ran past more rooms full of glass-fronted cases; through a chamber that seemed to contain old clothing; and then into an ancient laboratory, full of tubes and coils, dust-heavy machines festooned with dials and rusted switches. Here, between the lab tables, she pulled up abruptly, pausing to listen again.

There was another sound, much closer now, perhaps as close as the next room. It was the sound of something walking—shambling—toward her.

Almost without thinking, she threw herself beneath the nearest table, switching off her light.

Another sound came, hideously alien and yet unmistakably human. It started as a low chatter, a tattoo of rattling teeth, punctuated with a few gasps as if for breath. Then came a high keening, at the highest edge of audibility. Abruptly, the noise stopped. And then Nora heard, in the silence, the footsteps approach once again.

She remained hidden behind the table, immobilized by fear, as the shuffling drew closer in the pitch black. All of a sudden, the darkness was ripped apart by a terrible shriek. This was immediately followed by a coughing, retching sound and the splatter of fluid on stone. The echoes of the shriek died out slowly, ringing on through the stone chambers behind her.

Nora struggled to calm her pounding heart. Despite the unearthly sound, the thing that was approaching her was human. It had to be, she had to remember that. And if it was human, who could it be but Pendergast or the Surgeon? Nora felt it had to be the Surgeon. Perhaps he had been wounded by Pendergast. Or perhaps he was utterly insane.

She had one advantage: he didn’t seem to know she was there. She could ambush him, kill him with the scalpel. If she could summon the courage.

She crouched behind the lab table, scalpel in one trembling hand and light in the other, waiting in the enfolding dark. The shambling seemed to have stopped. A minute, an eternity, of silence ticked by. Then she heard the unsteady footsteps resume. He was now in the room with her.

The footsteps were irregular, punctuated by frequent pauses. Another minute went by in which there was no movement; then, half a dozen jerky footsteps. And now she could hear breathing. Except it wasn’t normal breathing, but a gasping, sucking sound, as if air were being drawn down through a wet hole.

There was a sudden explosion of noise as the person stumbled into a huge apparatus, bringing it to the ground with a massive crash of glass. The sound echoed and reechoed through the stone vaults.

Maintain, Nora said to herself. Maintain. If it’s the Surgeon, Pendergast must have wounded him badly. But then, where was Pendergast? Why wasn’t he pursuing?

The noises seemed to be less than twenty feet away now. She heard a scrabbling, a muttering and panting, and the tinkling of something shedding broken glass: he was getting up from his fall. There was a shuffling thump, and another. Still he was coming, moving with excruciating slowness. And all the time came that breathing: stertorous, with a wet gurgle like air drawn through a leaky snorkel. Nothing Nora had ever heard in her life was quite so unnerving as the sound of that breathing.

Ten feet. Nora gripped the scalpel tighter as adrenaline coursed through her. She would turn on her light and lunge forward. Surprise would give her the advantage, especially if he was wounded.

There was a loud wet snoring sound, another heavy footfall; a gasp, the spastic stamp of a foot; silence; then the dragging of a limb. He was almost upon her. She crouched, tensing all her muscles, ready to blind the man with her light and strike a fatal blow.

Another step, another snuffle: and she acted. She switched on the light — but, instead of leaping with her scalpel, she froze, arm raised, knife edge glittering in the beam of light.

And then she screamed.

THIRTEEN

CUSTER STOOD ATOP the great flight of steps rising above Museum Drive, looking out over the sea of press with an indescribable feeling of satisfaction. To his left was the mayor of the City of New York, just arriving with a gaggle of aides; to his right, the commissioner of police. Just behind stood his two top detectives and his man, Noyes. It was an extraordinary assemblage. There were so many onlookers, they’d been forced to close Central Park West to traffic. Press helicopters hovered above them, cameras dangling, brilliant spotlights swiveling back and forth. The capture of the Surgeon, aka Roger C. Brisbane III — the Museum’s respected general counsel and first vice president — had riveted the media’s attention. The copycat killer who had terrorized the city hadn’t been some crazy homeless man, living in Central Park on a piece of cardboard. It had instead been one of the pillars of Manhattan society, the smiling, cordial fixture at so many glittering fund-raisers and openings. Here was a man whose face and impeccably tailored figure was often seen in the society pages of Avenue and Vanity Fair. And now he stood revealed as one of New York’s most notorious serial killers. What a story. And he, Custer, had cracked the case single-handedly.

The mayor was conferring sotto voce with the commissioner and the Museum’s director, Collopy, who had at last been tracked down to his own West End residence. Custer’s gaze lingered on Collopy. The man had the gaunt, pinched look of a fire-and-brimstone preacher, and he wore clothes straight out of an old Bela Lugosi movie. The police had finally broken down his front door, suspecting foul play when they observed figures moving against the drawn shades. The scuttlebutt was that the police found him in a pink lace teddy, tied to his bed, with his wife and a second female dressed in dominatrix uniforms. Staring at the man, Custer refused to believe such a rumor. True, the man’s somber clothes looked just a tad disheveled. Still, it was impossible to believe such a pillar of propriety could ever have donned a teddy. Wasn’t it?

Now, Custer saw Mayor Montefiori’s eyes dart toward him. They were talking about him. Although he maintained his stolid expression, arranging his face into a mask of duty and obedience, he was unable to prevent a flush of pleasure from suffusing his limbs.

Commissioner Rocker broke away from the mayor and Collopy and came over. To Custer’s surprise, he did not look altogether happy.

“Captain.”

“Yes, sir.”

The commissioner stood there a moment, indecisive, face full of anxiety. Finally he leaned closer. “Are you sure?”

“Sure, sir?”

“Sure that it’s Brisbane.”

Custer felt a twinge of doubt, but quickly stepped down on it. The evidence was overwhelming.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did he confess?”

“No, not confess — exactly — but he made a number of self-incriminating statements. I expect he’ll confess when he’s formally questioned. They always do. Serial killers, I mean. And we found incriminating evidence in his Museum office—”

“No mistake about it? Mr. Brisbane is a very prominent person.”

“No mistake about it, sir.”

Rocker scrutinized his face a moment longer. Custer stirred uneasily. He had been expecting congratulations, not the third degree.

Then the commissioner leaned still closer and lowered his voice to a slow, deliberate whisper. “Custer, all I can say is, you’d better be right.”

“I am right, sir.”

The commissioner nodded, a look of guarded relief, still mixed with anxiety, settling on his face.

Now Custer stepped respectfully into the background, letting the mayor, his aides, Collopy, and the commissioner arrange themselves before the throngs of press. A feeling like electricity, an anticipatory tingling, filled the air.

The mayor raised his hand, and a hush fell on the crowd. Custer realized the man wasn’t even permitting his aides to introduce him. He was going to handle this personally. With the election so near, he wasn’t going to let even a crumb of glory escape.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” the mayor began. “We have made an arrest in the case of the serial killer popularly known as the Surgeon. The suspect taken into custody has been identified as Roger C. Brisbane III, first vice president and general counsel of the New York Museum of Natural History.”

There was a collective gasp. Although everyone in the crowd already knew this, hearing it from the mayor made it official.

“Although it’s important to state that Mr. Brisbane must naturally be presumed innocent at this time, the evidence against him is substantial.”

There was a brief hush.

“As mayor, I made this case a top priority. All available resources were brought to bear. I therefore want to thank, first of all, the fine officers of the NYPD, Commissioner Rocker, and the men and women of the homicide division, for their tireless work on this difficult case. And I would especially like to single out Captain Sherwood Custer. As I understand it, Captain Custer not only headed the investigation, but personally solved the case. I am shocked, as many of you must be, at the most unusual twist this tragic case has taken. Many of us know Mr. Brisbane personally. Nevertheless, the commissioner has assured me in no uncertain terms that they have the right man, and I am satisfied to rely on his assurances.”

He paused.

“Dr. Collopy of the Museum would like to say a few words.”

Hearing this, Custer tensed. The director would no doubt put up a dogged defense of his own right-hand man; he’d question Custer’s police work and investigative technique, make him look bad.

Collopy stood before the microphone, rigid and correct, his arms clasped behind his back. He spoke in cool, stately, and measured tones.

“First, I wish to add my thanks to the fine men and women of the New York Police Department, the commissioner, and the mayor, for their tireless work on this tragic case. This is a sad day for the Museum, and for me personally. I wish to extend my deepest apologies to the City of New York and to the families of the victims for the heinous actions of our trusted employee.”

Custer listened with growing relief. Here, Brisbane’s own boss was practically throwing him to the wolves. So much the better. And he felt a twinge of resentment at Commissioner Rocker’s excessive concern about Brisbane, which, it seemed, even his own boss didn’t share.

Collopy stepped back, and the mayor returned to the microphone. “I will now take questions,” he said.

There was a roar, a rippling flurry of hands through the crowd. The mayor’s spokesperson, Mary Hill, stepped forward to manage the questioning.

Custer looked toward the crowd. The unpleasant memory of Smithback’s hangdog visage flitted across his mind, and he was glad not to see it among the sea of faces.

Mary Hill had called on someone, and Custer heard the shouted question. “Why did he do it? Was he really trying to prolong his life?”

The mayor shook his head. “I cannot speculate on motive at this time.”

“This is a question for Captain Custer!” a voice shouted. “How did you know it was Brisbane? What was the smoking gun?”

Custer stepped forward, once again gathering his face into a mask of stolidity. “A derby hat, umbrella, and black suit,” he said, significantly, and paused. “The so-called Surgeon, when he went out to stalk his victims, was seen to wear just such an outfit. I discovered the disguise myself in Mr. Brisbane’s office.”

“Did you find the murder weapon?”

“We are continuing to search the office, and we have dispatched teams to search Mr. Brisbane’s apartment and summer house on Long Island. The Long Island search,” he added significantly, “will include cadaver-trained tracking dogs.”

“What was the role of the FBI in this case?” a television reporter shouted.

“Nothing,” the commissioner answered hastily. “There was no role. All the work was done by local law enforcement. An FBI agent did take an unofficial interest early on, but those leads led nowhere and as far as we know he has abandoned the case.”

“Another question for Captain Custer, please! How does it feel, sir, to have cracked the biggest case since Son of Sam?”

It was that prepped-out weenie, Bryce Harriman. It was the question he had longed for someone to ask. Once again, the man had ridden to his rescue. It was beautiful how these things worked out.

Custer summoned up his most impassive monotone: “I was just doing my duty as a police officer. Nothing less, and nothing more.”

Then he stood back and basked, poker-faced, in the endless flare of flashbulbs that ensued.

FOURTEEN

THE IMAGE THAT burst into the beam of Nora’s light was so unexpected, so horrifying, that she instinctively scrambled backward, dropped the scalpel, and ran. Her only conscious desire was to put some distance between herself and the awful sight.

But at the door she stopped. The man — she had to think of him as that — was not following her. In fact, he seemed to be shuffling along as before, zombie-like, unaware of her presence. With a shaking hand she trained the light back on him.

The man’s clothes hung from his frame in tatters, skin raked and scored and bleeding as if by frenzied scratching. The scalp was torn, skin hanging away in flaps from where it had apparently been ripped from the skull. Tufts of bloody hair remained clutched rigidly between the fingers of the right hand: a hand whose epithelial layers were sloughing away in parchment-like curls of tissue. The lips had swollen to a grotesque size, liver-colored bananas covered with whitish weals. A tongue, cracked and blackened, forced its way between them. A wet gargling came from deep inside the throat, and each effort to suck in or expel air caused the tongue to quiver. Through the gaps in the ragged shirt, Nora could see angry-looking chancres on the chest and abdomen, weeping clear fluid. Below the armpits were thick colonies of pustules like small red berries, some of which she saw — with a sickening sense of fast-motion photography — were swelling rapidly; even as she watched, one burst with a sickening pop, while more blistered and swelled to take its place.

But what horrified Nora most were the eyes. One was twice normal size, blood-engorged, protruding freakishly from the orbital socket. It jittered and darted about, roving wildly but seeing nothing. The other, in contrast, was dark and shriveled, motionless, sunken deep beneath the brow.

A fresh shudder of revulsion went through Nora. It must be some pathetic victim of the Surgeon. But what had happened to him? What dreadful torture had he undergone?

As she watched, spellbound with horror, the figure paused, and seemed to look at her for the first time. The head tilted up and the jittery eye paused and appeared to fix on her. She tensed, ready for flight. But the moment passed. The figure underwent a violent trembling from head to toe; then the head dropped down, and it once more resumed its quivering walk to nowhere.

She turned the light away from the obscene spectacle, feeling sick. Worse even than the loathsome sight was her sudden recognition. It had come to her in a flash, when the bloated eye had fixed on hers: she knew this man. As grotesquely malformed as it now was, she remembered seeing that distinctive face before, so powerful, so self-confident, emerging from the back of a limousine outside the Catherine Street digsite.

The shock nearly took her breath away. She looked with horror at the figure’s retreating back. What had the Surgeon done to him? Was there anything she could do to help?

Even as the thought came to her, she realized the man was far beyond help. She lowered the flashlight from the grotesque form as it shuffled slowly, aimlessly away from her, back toward a room beyond the lab.

She thrust the light forward. And then, in the edge of the flashlight’s beam, she made out Pendergast.

He was in the next room, lying on his side, blood pooling on the ground below him. He looked dead. Nearby, a large, rusted axe lay on the floor. Beyond it was an upended executioner’s block.

Suppressing a cry, she ran through the connecting archway and knelt before him. To her surprise, the FBI agent opened his eyes.

“What happened?” she cried. “Are you all right?”

Pendergast smiled weakly. “Never better, Dr. Kelly.”

She flashed her light at the pool of blood, at the crimson stain that covered his shirtfront. “You’re been hurt!”

Pendergast looked at her, his pale eyes cloudy. “Yes. I’m afraid I’ll need your help.”

“But what happened? Where’s the Surgeon?”

Pendergast’s eyes seem to clear a little. “Didn’t you see him, ah, walk past?”

“What? The man covered with sores? Fairhaven? He’s the killer?”

Pendergast nodded.

“Jesus! What happened to him?”

“Poisoned.”

“How?”

“He picked up several of the objects in this room. Take care not to follow his example. Everything you see here is an experimental poison-delivery system. When he handled the various weapons, Fairhaven absorbed quite a cocktail of poisons through his skin: neurotoxins and other fast-acting systemics, no doubt.”

He grasped her hand with his own, slippery with blood. “Smithback?”

“Alive.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Leng had started to operate.”

“I know. Is he stable?”

“Yes, but I don’t know for how long. We’ve got to get him — and you — to a hospital right away.”

Pendergast nodded. “There’s an acquaintance of mine, a doctor, who can arrange everything.”

“How are we going to get out of here?”

Pendergast’s gun lay on the ground nearby, and he reached for it, grimacing a little. “Help me up, please. I need to get back to the operating room, to check on Smithback and stop my own bleeding.”

She helped the agent to his feet. Pendergast stumbled a little, leaning heavily on her arm. “Shine your light on our friend a moment, if you please,” he said.

The Fairhaven-thing was shuffling along one wall of the room. He ran into a large wooden cabinet, stopped, backed up, came forward again, as if unable to negotiate the obstacle. Pendergast gazed at the thing for a moment, then turned away.

“He’s no longer a threat,” he murmured. “Let’s get back upstairs, as quickly as possible.”

They retraced their steps back through the chambers of the subbasement, Pendergast stopping periodically to rest. Slowly, painfully, they mounted the stairs.

In the operating room, Smithback lay on the table, still unconscious. Nora scanned the monitors quickly: the vitals remained weak, but steady. The liter bag of saline was almost empty, and she replaced it with a third. Pendergast bent over the journalist, drew back the covers, and examined him. After a few moments, he stepped back.

“He’ll survive,” he said simply.

Nora felt a huge sense of relief.

“Now I’m going to need some help. Help me get my jacket and shirt off.”

Nora untied the jacket around Pendergast’s midsection, then helped him remove his shirt, exposing a ragged hole in his abdomen, thickly encrusted in blood. More blood was dripping from his shattered elbow.

“Roll that tray of surgical instruments this way,” he said, gesturing with his good hand.

Nora rolled the tray over. She could not help but notice that his torso, although slender, was powerfully muscled.

“Grab those clamps over there, too, please.” Pendergast swabbed the blood away from the abdominal wound, then irrigated it with Betadine.

“Don’t you want something for the pain? I know there’s some—”

“No time.” Pendergast dropped the bloody gauze to the floor and angled the overhead light toward the wound in his abdomen. “I have to tie off these bleeders before I grow any weaker.”

Nora watched him inspect the wound.

“Shine that light a little lower, would you? There, that’s good. Now, if you’d hand me that clamp?”

Although Nora had a strong stomach, watching Pendergast probe his own abdomen made her feel distinctly queasy. After a moment he laid down the clamp, took up a scalpel, and made a short cut perpendicular to the wound.

“You’re not going to operate on yourself, are you?”

Pendergast shook his head. “Just a quick-and-dirty effort to stop the bleeding. But I’ve got to reach this colic vein, which, with all my exertion, has unfortunately retracted.” He made another little cut, and then probed into the wound with a large, tweezer-like instrument.

Nora winced, tried to think of something else. “How are we going to get out of here?” she asked again.

“Through the basement tunnels. My research on this area turned up the fact that a river brigand once lived along this stretch of Riverside. Based on the extent of the cellars below us, I feel certain now that this was his residence. Did you notice the superb view of the Hudson the house commanded?”

“No,” Nora replied, swallowing. “Can’t say I did.”

“That’s understandable, considering the North River Water Pollution Control Plant now blocks much of the view,” Pendergast said as he fished a large vein out of the wound with the clamp. “But a hundred and fifty years ago, this house would have had a sweeping view of the lower Hudson. River pirates were fairly common in the early nineteenth century. They would slip out onto the river after dark to hijack moored ships or capture passengers for ransom.” He paused while he examined the end of the vein. “Leng must have known this. A large subbasement was the first thing he wanted in a house. I believe we will find a way down to the river, via the subbasement. Hand me that absorbable suture, if you please? No, the larger one, the 4–0. Thank you.”

Nora looked on, wincing inwardly, as Pendergast ligated the vein.

“Good,” he said a few moments later, as he released the clamp and put the suture aside. “That vein was causing most of the bleeding. I can do nothing about my spleen, which has obviously been perforated, so I’ll merely cauterize the smaller bleeders and close the wound. Would you hand me the electrocauterer, please? Yes, that’s it.”

Nora handed the device — a narrow blue pencil at the end of a wire, two buttons marked cut and cauterize on its side — to the FBI agent. Once again, he bent over his wound. There was a sharp crackling sound as he cauterized a vein. This was followed by another crackling noise — much longer this time — and a thin wisp of smoke rose into the air. Nora averted her eyes.

“What was Leng’s ultimate project?” she asked.

Pendergast did not respond immediately. “Enoch Leng wanted to heal the human race,” he said at last, still bent over the wound. “He wanted to save it.”

For a moment, Nora wasn’t sure she had heard correctly. “Save the human race? But he was killing people. Scores of people.”

“So he was.” Another crackling noise.

“Save it how?”

“By eliminating it.”

Nora looked back at him.

“That was Leng’s grand project: to rid the earth of humanity, to save mankind from itself, from its own unfitness. He was searching for the ultimate poison — hence those rooms full of chemicals, plants, poisonous insects and reptiles. Of course, I had plenty of tangential evidence before: the poisonous materials on the glass fragments you unearthed from Leng’s old laboratory, for example. Or the Greek inscription on the escutcheon outside the house. Did you notice it?”

Nora nodded her head numbly.

“It’s the final words of Socrates, spoken as he took the fatal poison.

‘Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?’ Yet another thing I should have realized sooner.” He cauterized another vein. “But it wasn’t until I saw the room full of weapons that I made the connection and realized the scope of his plans. Because creating the ultimate poison alone wasn’t enough — he would also have to create a delivery system, a way to make it reach across the globe. That’s when the more vexing, inexplicable parts of the cabinet — the clothing, weapons, migratory birds, windborne spores, and the rest — made sense to me. Among other things, while researching this delivery system, he had collected all manner of poisoned objects: clothing, weapons, accessories. And much of it was poisoned by himself — redundant experiments with all manner of poisons.”

“My God,” Nora said. “What a crazy scheme.”

“It was an ambitious scheme, certainly. One he realized would take several lifetimes to complete. That was why he developed his, ah, method of life extension.”

Pendergast put the electrocauterer carefully to one side. “I’ve seen no evidence here of any supplies for closing incisions,” he said. “Clearly, Fairhaven had no need of them. If you’ll hand me that gauze and the medical tape, I’ll butterfly the wound until it can be properly attended to. Again, I’ll need your assistance.”

Nora handed him the requested items, then helped him close. “Did he succeed in finding the ultimate poison?” she asked.

“No. Based on the state of his laboratory, I would say he gave up around 1950.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Pendergast said as he taped gauze over the exit wound. The troubled look she’d noticed earlier returned. “It’s very curious. It’s a great mystery to me.”

Dressing completed, Pendergast straightened up. Following his instructions, Nora helped him make a sling for his injured arm using torn surgical sheets, then helped him into his shirt.

Pendergast turned once again to Smithback, examining his unconscious form, studying the monitors at the head of the table. He felt Smithback’s pulse, examined the dressing Nora had made. After rummaging through the cabinet he brought out a syringe, and injected it into the saline tube.

“That should keep him comfortable until you can get out of here and alert my doctor,” he said.

“Me?” Nora said.

“My dear Dr. Kelly, somebody has to keep watch over Smithback. We daren’t move him ourselves. With my arm in a sling and a gunshot wound in my abdomen, I fear I’m in no condition to go anywhere, let alone row.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will, shortly. And now, please assist me back down these stairs.”

With a final look at Smithback, Nora helped Pendergast back down the staircase and through the series of stone chambers, past the endless collections. Knowing their purpose made them seem even more dreadful.

At the laboratory, Nora slowed. She angled her light into the weapons room beyond, and saw Fairhaven, still motionless, sitting in the corner. Pendergast regarded him a moment, then moved to the heavy door in the far wall and eased it open. Beyond it lay another descending staircase, much cruder, seemingly fashioned out of a natural cavity in the earth.

“Where does this go?” Nora asked as she approached.

“Unless I’m mistaken, to the river.”

They descended the staircase, the perfume of mold and heavy humidity rising to greet them. At the bottom, Nora’s light revealed a stone quay, lapped by water, with a watery tunnel leading off into darkness. An ancient wooden boat lay upturned on the quay.

“The river pirate’s lair,” Pendergast said as Nora shone the light around. “This was how he snuck out to the Hudson to attack shipping. If the boat’s still seaworthy, you can take it out into the river.”

Nora angled the light toward the skiff.

“Can you row?” Pendergast inquired.

“I’m an expert.”

“Good. I believe you’ll find an abandoned marina a few blocks south of here. Get to a phone as quickly as possible, call 645-7884; that’s the number of my chauffeur, Proctor. Explain to him what’s happened. He’ll come get you and arrange everything, including the doctor for Smithback and myself.”

Nora turned over the rowboat and slid it into the water. It was old, loose-jointed, and leaky, but it appeared to be seaworthy.

“You’ll take care of Bill while I’m gone?” she said.

Pendergast nodded, the reflected water rippling across his pale face.

She stepped gingerly into the boat.

Pendergast stepped forward. “Dr. Kelly,” he said in a low voice. “There is something more I must tell you.”

She looked up from the boat.

“The authorities must not know about what is in this house. Somewhere within these walls, I’m convinced, is the formula for the prolongation of human life. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Nora replied after a moment. She stared at him as the full import of what he was saying began to sink in. The secret to prolonged life: it still seemed incredible. Unbelievable.

“I must also admit to a more personal reason for secrecy. I do not wish to bring more infamy down on the Pendergast name.”

“Leng was your ancestor.”

“Yes. My great-grand-uncle.”

Nora nodded as she fitted the oarlocks. It was an antique notion of family honor; but then, she already knew that Pendergast was a man out of his time.

“My doctor will evacuate Smithback to a private hospital upstate where they do not ask inconvenient questions. I will, of course, undergo surgery there myself. We need never mention our adventure to the authorities.”

“I understand,” she repeated.

“People will wonder what happened to Fairhaven. But I doubt very much the police will ever identify him as the Surgeon, or make the connection with 891 Riverside Drive.”

“Then the Surgeon’s murders will remain unsolved? A mystery?”

“Yes. But unsolved murders are always the most interesting, don’t you think? Now, repeat the telephone number for me, please.”

“Six four five-seven eight eight four.”

“Excellent. Now please hurry, Dr. Kelly.”

She pushed away from the quay, then turned back to look at Pendergast once again, her boat bobbing in the shallow water.

“One more question. How in the world did you escape from those chains? It seemed like magic.”

In the dim light, she saw Pendergast’s lips part in what appeared to be a smile. “It was magic.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Magic and the Pendergast family are synonymous. There have been magicians in my lineage for ten generations. We’ve all dabbled in it. Antoine Leng Pendergast was no exception: in fact, he was one of the most talented in the family. Surely you noticed the stage apparatus in the refectory? Not to mention the false walls, secret panels, trapdoors? Without knowing it, Fairhaven bound his victims with Leng’s trick cuffs. I recognized them right away: the American Guiteau handcuffs and Bean Prison leg-irons, fitted with a false rivet that any magician, once manacled, could remove with his fingers or teeth. To a person who knew the secret, they were about as secure as transparent tape.”

And Pendergast began laughing softly, almost to himself.

Nora rowed away, the splashing of the oars distorted in the low, rocky cavern. In a few moments she came to a weed-choked opening between two rocks, just large enough to admit the boat. She pushed through and was suddenly on the broad expanse of the Hudson, the vast bulk of the North River plant rising above her, the great glittering arc of the George Washington Bridge looming farther to the north. Nora took a deep breath of the cool, fresh air. She could hardly believe they were still alive.

She glanced back at the opening through which she had just come. It looked like a tangle of weeds and some boulders leaning together — nothing more.

As she bent to the oars, the abandoned marina just coming into view against the distant gleaming towers of Midtown Manhattan, she thought she could still make out — borne on the midnight wind — the faint sound of Pendergast’s laughter.